


we can be heroes

by younglegends



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Camp Half-Blood, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-01 03:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: An ancient evil stirs from where she's buried. A prophecy is told, and four half-bloods reluctantly answer the call.And meanwhile, Jason Scott is stuck on garbage duty on the other side of the country when he spots a rusted old coin on the ground.





	we can be heroes

**Author's Note:**

> a story about reckless teenagers? of COURSE i had to tie it in with my other favourite story about reckless teenagers. i'm only me, after all.

On the cusp of a newly golden summer Angel Grove stands still as a grave under the midmorning sun. Traffic lies at a lull, streetlights turning green for no one. Overgrown lawns are yellowing in the slow haze of heat and missing pet posters pinned to telephone poles curl up at their edges. Above, the sky one big, blue unblinking eye.

Jason Scott leans over, stabs an empty chip bag on the sidewalk with his litter pick, and deposits it into his garbage bag.

A car passes by him on the street, slows to a crawl. “Hey, Eleven,” comes a shout, some guy leaning out the window. “Having a good time with the rest of the trash?” A honk of the horn and they’re off in a cloud of exhaust, laughter scattering into echoes on a wind that dies down as quickly as it had risen.

“Never better,” Jason says aloud. The first noise he’s made all day. Nobody should be around to hear him say it, but in the stillness of the morning a flash of movement catches his eye. He traces it to a trio of old women standing under the shade of the ice cream parlour across the street, who’ve looked up to stare straight at him. He can’t quite make out their faces, but even from this distance he feels a vague sense of recognition. They’re knitting something, and as Jason watches, the woman in the middle takes out a large pair of scissors and cuts the yarn cleanly in two with a _snip_ that resounds all the way across the street. Huh, Jason thinks. Scrapes a piece of gum off the sidewalk with his stick, and by the time he looks back up again, they’re gone. Like they were never there at all.

An hour of community service every Saturday—would’ve just been detention, if he’d pulled his prank earlier than the end of the school year. A police monitor around his ankle. A brace on his leg. A ban from the football team for the rest of his high school career, and for some reason that’s the one his stepfather won’t let go of, slamming doors and shouting because goddammit Jason, all you had to do was not screw this up and you’d have coasted out of here on your own meal ticket, and now you’ve got nothing. Now you’re nothing.

Jason picks up an empty soda can, a Styrofoam takeout container, a rotted apple core. Scratches under the collar of his fluorescent orange vest and squints up at the sun. First day of summer. The city stuck in the wrong end of a dry spell, on the verge of drought. The morning clear and quiet all around him. And an immense restlessness itching at his skin, at the ache in his knee, just waiting for something to happen.

When he glances back down he spots something shiny on the pavement. A coin, glinting slightly red in the sunlight. Must be a lucky penny, Jason thinks, and he bends down to pick it up. He’s just getting back to his feet when he catches sight of the plume of grey rising stark against the clear blue sky. _Fire,_ he thinks, and then _tornado_ when the storm draws nearer, but it’s not until he takes a closer look that he realizes it’s not smoke or wind but _dust,_ burying everything in its wake in ash—

And out of it flies a guy with tiny _wings_ on his battered black sneakers who skids to a crash on the ground in front of Jason, arms pinwheeling wildly, looks him straight in the eye and says—“Run!”

 

* * *

 

When Zordon’d returned from his meeting with the Oracle he’d looked like he’d aged a hundred years, which was funny considering how old the guy already was. Zack’d told him this, but Zordon hadn’t seemed to appreciate it. Just looked at the four of them he’d called to the Big House and said they had to go on a quest.

“I thought we got to pick our quest teams,” Kimberly had said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this is going to be my first quest, and none of us even _know_ each other.”

The skeptical arch of her raised eyebrow had been too much for Zack, even if she was right, so he’d crossed his arms, allowed a sleazy grin to settle over his face. “Oh, but we all know _of_ you, I’m sure,” he said. “You punched Ty Fleming’s tooth out. Not everyday someone does that to an Ares kid.”

Kimberly bristled. “They put it back,” she said, something almost desperate about it, but by then Billy was stepping forward, a frown on his face.

“Zordon,” he said. “This quest. Uh—what is it we have to _do,_ exactly?”

Zordon rubbed at his eyes. Son of Athena, oldest living demigod, director of Camp Half-Blood, and this was the first time Zack had ever seen him look tired in all his summers here. A twinge of dread tightened in his gut. The weight of a stone falling for years and years, finally hitting the ground.

“She’s back,” Zordon said, eyes bleak and distant, as though stuck seeing something in the past. “You have to find him, before she does.”

A beat of silence. Then they were all talking over each other at once. “Who’s _she?_ ” Zack said, and “Who’s _him?_ ” Kimberly said, but it was Trini who looked Zordon in the eye and asked—“What was the prophecy?”

Typical Apollo kids, Zack had thought with a roll of his eyes. Like anything still mattered if it was all just preordained by the word of gods. But Zordon had closed his eyes, like she’d struck straight into the heart of the matter.

“… _seek those who are worthy,_ ” he’d whispered, and he would say nothing more but the name of a place called Angel Grove.

And Zack doesn’t know about _worthy,_ but the guy had been ready, at least—took one look at the situation and followed suit, running after Zack down the road. In truth Zack’s faster in flight, but it seems like a dick move to leave the guy alone on the ground, so he settles for pounding his feet against the pavement and praying he doesn’t trip, not here, not now, not with Rita Repulsa on their heels with an army of undead skeletons and a crack of gold running down her sharp-toothed smile.

But then the guy starts lagging, a clear wince of pain on his face as his legs start dragging behind him, and oh, hell no, Zack didn’t come all the way across the country chased by the goddamn daughter of Hades to fail his quest now, and then Kimberly’s there, grabbing the guy’s arm and trying to help him forward, and Trini’s materialized on Zack’s other side, shouting if they’re sure this is the right guy, and all Zack can think is _where_ the hell is Billy?

A horn honk sounds like the fanfare of a trumpet in Zack’s ears, heralding the arrival of a van that screeches to a stop before them on the street. “Get in,” Billy shouts, honest-to-god _driving_ , and Zack’s never been more grateful to obey an order in all his life.

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit,” the new guy says when he takes a good look at the inside of the van, and normally Billy’d take a moment to appreciate the compliment, but there’s a skeleton army after them right now, so he tells himself to focus, instead. Swings the shell for luck. Floors the accelerator and hears the echoing thud of four unseatbelted passengers slamming into each other. Right. This is why he doesn’t drive.

“Seatbelts, people,” Billy hollers as he turns a corner with a squeal of tires and narrowly avoids flattening a stop sign. The skeletons are swarming the van, so he jabs a button on the dashboard—and immediately winces when the surround speakers start blasting country music. “Okay, wrong button, sorry—” He turns off the music and presses the button next to it, and the roof of the van shudders in a grind of metal, opens for Kimberly, who’s already clambering up, bow drawn and arrows firing. Billy glances into the rearview mirror just in time to see the new guy mouth—lost in the din of noise around them— _What the fuck._

“Language,” Billy says, and then screams when a bony hand shoves through the open crack of window— _Zack,_ c’mon, Billy’d installed air conditioning for a reason—and curls its fingers into the collar of his shirt. It’s got him in a death grip—literally—but Billy floors the accelerator, keeps the van careening wildly down the streets, and above all does not look away from the road, because that’s all it takes, just one glance away, that’s all it took for his stepfather the night he—

A sickening crack of bone, and suddenly the skeleton’s gone, whipped away in the momentum of the van as it swerves around a corner, and Billy stares wide-eyed at the guy who’d lunged forward from the backseat— _still not wearing a seatbelt_ —all the way into the front, into Billy’s space, hand still awkwardly raised.

“Did you just _slap_ it?” Billy says, voice teetering on the edge of hysterical.

“Nice,” Zack says approvingly from the backseat.

“Can you move,” Trini grunts, “your leg’s in my face.”

“Um,” the guy says. “Was that—a skeleton?”

“Shit, I _see_ her _,_ ” Kimberly shouts from above, and Billy doesn’t mean to look, but she’s _right there_ in the rearview mirror, teeth bared and hands raised, as though ready to summon—

“Take the left up ahead,” the guy shouts beside Billy. He’s somehow crawled his way into shotgun, hanging half off the seat, and doesn’t he realize how dangerous that is—Billy’s worked on this van for years now, coaxed the engine back into the steady hum of life with his own two hands but all it takes is one slip and the walls of machinery and metal can just turn into a tomb again, Billy knows this, Billy’s got to _tell_ him this, but the guy just looks at him, voice running loud and clear through the noise of everything else to reach him, says “Take the left,” like nothing else matters, and Billy does.

“Another left,” the guy says, like there isn’t an army of skeletons rising up all around them, like Trini and Zack aren’t hanging out of the backseat windows cutting them down with daggers and axe, like Kimberly isn’t up on the roof unleashing three arrows at a time out of a quiver that never empties. “That’s the way out of town, there. Take the smaller road up ahead.”

“Hey,” Billy says, as he speeds over the crunch of bone on asphalt up and down the hills, as streets of square buildings and storefronts fade out into dirt roads and trees, mountains looming over them in the distance.

“Yeah?” The guy looks back at him. His eyes are blue.

“Could you put on your seatbelt,” Billy says.

The guy blinks at him. “Oh,” he says. “Uh. Sure?”

Then Kimberly drops back down from the roof, landing straight on top of Trini and Zack in the backseats. “Oof,” says Zack through a mouthful of hair, and “What the hell,” says Trini, muffled entirely, but Kimberly turns to look straight at Billy with clear panic in her eyes. And Billy doesn’t know Kimberly, not really, but she’s kind of hard to miss at camp; he’s seen her angry, focused, emerging from the river triumphantly clutching a flag in her hand, but he’s never seen her scared. Not until now.

“There’s a train coming up ahead,” she says. “We’re not gonna make it.”

Billy tightens his grip on the wheel. That’s it, then, he thinks numbly—this is the end—and his brain’s racing ahead of him, already working out all the ways he can fix it, remembering the weight in his jacket pocket, but the guy beside him cuts through all of it when he says, “No, we will.”

Billy stares at him. At the freight train speeding straight towards the road like a bullet. Then back at him.

“Don’t stop,” the guy says, “you got this.”

Everyone’s yelling at once, again—“Are you crazy,” says Zack—“There’s no way,” says Trini—“He definitely does _not_ have this,” says Kimberly—“This is why I don’t _drive,_ ” Billy says, as the van hurtles down the hill, and the guy beside him looks him straight in the eye, says “You got this” like he believes nothing else, and Billy doesn’t even know his _name_ —

The van around them is reduced to a scream of metal, suspended in the air, and all he has eyes for in the moment of impact is the windshield before him, cracks spluttering across glass—but not breaking, still holding together, and Billy lets out a breath, relief ringing hollow in his chest, hard enough to hurt.

Then the airbags balloon up to meet him, and nothing.

 

* * *

 

Trini’s having a dream. She knows this because she’s had it before. It always begins the same way: she’s seated at the dinner table, fully set and laden with steaming dishes, fresh off the stove and ready to be eaten. Her stepbrothers are sitting on either side of her, arguing about superheroes. Her mother’s sitting across from her, bringing her spoon to her lips. Her stepfather’s sitting beside her mother, but she can’t quite make out his face.

“Trini,” her mother says, and it takes a moment for Trini to recognize the unfamiliar tone of her voice as sincerity, because she’s never heard it before. “How was your day at school?”

“Superman’s the best,” her brother says. “He’s actually a god, but he still saves people.”

“Talk to me, Trini,” her mother says. “How are you doing?”

“No, Batman’s the best,” her other brother says. “He’s just a human, but he still saves people.”

“You know you can always tell me anything,” her mother says. “You know that, right?”

Trini looks at her stepfather. Her stepfather looks back. Neither of them say a word, and Trini realizes at that moment that if either one of them is going to speak, it’s going to have to be her. But she can’t do it. Her hands clench in her lap with all the weight of what she’s holding onto, because she knows if she says it something awful will happen, some force will tear through the perfect family portrait before her, and she’ll never be able to take it back.

“Trini?”

That’s definitely not her mother’s voice. She opens her eyes. Kimberly Hart is staring down at her, hair falling over her face, a line of worry creasing at her forehead. There’s a cut on her cheek, a pinprick of blood beating at its edge, and Trini goes a little cross-eyed watching it fall, as though ready to catch it on her lips—

She shoots upright, knocking Kimberly clean out of the way. Wipes at her mouth. They’re in a clearing by the train tracks, at the bottom of the hills, surrounded by trees. Zack’s sitting on top of the railroad crossing sign, peering out into the distance. Billy’s hunched over the raised hood of the van, which is smoking slightly and making clunking noises, and the new guy is squatted on the ground next to him, talking.

“So, let me get this straight,” he says, glancing up at Billy with something awestruck pulling at the corner of his mouth. “You _built_ this thing?”

“No,” Billy says, not really paying attention, instead pressing a finger to the sputtering engine of the car. “It was already built. I just fixed it up a little.”

“Trini,” Kimberly says. “Hey—Trini.”

“That’s incredible, though,” the other guy says. “Hey, if this one’s totaled, look on the bright side. Now you can build a cooler-looking one.”

Billy stops, turns to look at him. “That van’s been in my family ten years,” he says. “I brought it back from the dead once. I can do it again.”

“Trini,” Kimberly says. Comes to stand in front of her, blocking her field of vision. “You’re bleeding. Do you want some nectar?”

Trini turns away. “Where’d Rita go?” she says, to the others. Her jaw is sore, and she works it for a moment, tongue running over every one of her teeth to check that they’re all still there. Swallowing the blood in her mouth. “Why’d she just leave us here when we were knocked out like sitting ducks from the crash?”

Zack shrugs from his perch. “Maybe she thought we died in that crash.”

“We _should_ have died in that crash,” Kimberly says.

“Not in my car,” Billy says, and then, “I told you all to wear a seatbelt.”

“Whoa, whoa,” the new guy says, holding up his hands. “Look, it’s been nice and all, but I don’t know who you are or what the hell just happened and _why_ any of it did. What’s going on?”

Trini turns on her heel, stares at all of them. “Really?” she says. “None of you thought it’d be a good idea to tell him _anything?_ ”

“There’s got to be some guy who’s paid to do this kinda thing,” Zack says. “We could Iris-cam Zordon, get him to break the news. Hey, d’you think Zordon gets paid—?”

“Okay, so,” Kimberly’s saying over the both of them, “let me tell you the story of your life. Dyslexia, early diagnosis of ADHD, but any sort of physical activity’s good, maybe a sport or two, something you can channel your pent-up energy into, your battle instincts. You’ve always been healthy and strong and a hotspot for trouble. Am I getting close yet?”

“Battle instincts?” the guy repeats.

“Oh my god,” Trini says, raising her eyes to the heavens, “can you just cut the bullshit, please—” She turns to look at him. “The gods are real,” she says, voice perfectly steady. “The Greek ones, to be specific.”

“Damn,” Zack says with a whistle, “no sugarcoating, huh?”

Kimberly whirls around to glare at her, throwing up her hands. “Great, now he thinks we’re crazy. I was trying to explain in a way that actually makes _sense_ —”

“Nothing about us makes sense!” Trini snaps, looking her in the eye for the first time. “Just give him the goddamn truth—it’s the least we can do!”

“Okay,” the guy says, and the all stop in their tracks, turn back to him. “Okay, the gods are real. What does that have to do with this? With us?”

They’re all staring at him now, because it’s not the reaction they expected— _he’s_ not what they expected. Trini remembers when she first found out. Thirteen years old and her mother was driving her to summer camp, rubbing at her forehead and saying something about gods and monsters and all Trini could think was that she’d found out, that she _knew,_ that she was sending her away forever. Then they arrived and for a moment Trini'd thought there was a reason, all along, for why she was different. When the symbol of the golden sun had alighted briefly bright and shining over her head she'd believed everything, at last, was going to change. But that, too, had faded away eventually. Even in this world, she wouldn't get to belong. It was far worse than finding out magic wasn't real: it was knowing it  _was,_ and none of it making a difference at all.

“We’re demigods,” Billy says. Matter-of-fact, as though remarking on the weather. “We’re the half-children of the gods.”

A moment passes. Billy, straightening up from where he’s bent over the hood of the van, wiping his grease-covered palm on his jeans. Kimberly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, in the birth of a sudden breeze. Zack, drumming his fingers against his knee, wings fluttering at his ankles as though ready to take off. And Trini, standing there in her jacket too hot and stifling under the light of the sun, watching the new guy watch them, wondering what on earth it is he sees.

“Huh,” the guy says. Thoughtful. “Okay. So if you’re all children of the gods—who, then? Whose children _are_ you?”

“Guess,” Zack says with a grin, lifting a couple inches up off the sign.

“He’s a son of Hermes,” Billy says, deflating Zack instantly, who drops back down with a thud. “I’m a Hephaestus kid.”

“Hecate,” says Kimberly, like it’s roll call.

“Like in Macbeth,” Billy says by way of explanation, at the raised eyebrow on the new guy’s face.

Kimberly’s eyes flash. Oh, boy, Trini thinks, here we go. “Like the goddess of magic and witchcraft, actually,” Kimberly says.

“Necromancy,” Zack offers.

“The crossroads,” Trini says, and why does _she_ get a look from Kimberly at that, not Zack?

“So… a little like in Macbeth,” Billy says with a shrug.

“Billy,” Kimberly says. “I assure you. You are the only person here who’s read Macbeth.”

“Rude,” Zack says. Then he shrugs. “But true.”

“It’s called audiobooks, okay,” Billy’s saying, “you should try them,” but the guy isn’t paying attention anymore. Turns instead to Trini.

“And you?” he says. “What about you?”

“Apollo,” Trini says. Schools her face into nonchalance, but the name doesn’t quite fit right in her mouth. It’s too big for the crack of her voice.

“Cool,” the guy says, considering, and then—“What about me, then? Whose kid am I?”

They all exchange a look. “We were kinda hoping maybe you’d have some insight on that,” Billy says. “You ever feel, like, a certain affinity with something? Got a love for, say, gardening? Fighting? Ever had some fancy glowing symbol appear over your head?”

“I’ve got my money on Aphrodite,” Zack says. “Just look at him, c’mon.”

“It’s like you’re _trying_ to get struck down by the gods,” Kimberly says.

The guy’s leant back against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks almost amused. “Okay,” he says, one more time. “So you guys are all descendants of the gods and apparently so am I and you’ve come to collect me for… what?”

“A quest,” Kimberly says, sounding righteous and almighty.

“No clue,” Trini says, ignoring Kimberly’s look of exasperation. “Our job is just getting you the hell out of here.”

“Those skeletons,” the guy says. “Those were real, too, huh?”

“Those skeletons are the least of your problems,” Kimberly says. “They’re being led by this really powerful demigod who’s out to get you. All of us, really. We have to escort you back to Camp Half-Blood, where all the other demigods are. That’s where you’ll get your answers.”

Billy winces. “It kinda does sound like kidnapping when you put it like that, huh,” he says.

“Besides that, there’s a small problem,” the guy says. He points down, and at first Trini thinks he means his leg brace, but he's lifting up his pant leg to reveal a blinking light. “House arrest. If I’m not home by five, I’ll be in deep trouble.” He shrugs.

“Damn,” Zack says, “the Oracle really knows how to pick its heroes.” He hefts his axe in hand. “I’ve always wanted to have a go at one of those things.”

“Don’t even think about it,” the guy says, and then jerks back when Billy drops down to a knee, peers closely at the cuff around his ankle.

“Hmm,” Billy says. “Don’t worry, I got this.” Lays a palm against the metal. A second of silence—and then he gets back to his feet. “There. You can go anywhere you want, now.”

“Uh,” the guy says. “Are you sure? What’d you even do?”

“Just put it to sleep,” Billy says. “Trust me—it’s not gonna be a problem anymore.”

“God,” the guy says. Wild-eyed. “You—you got rid of it? This is definitely illegal.”

“More than that,” Billy says. “It’s magic."

Then he's jerking backward, because the guy's come forward with his arms up. Trini instantly tenses, fingering the dagger in her pocket, but she's gotten it wrong—he's only trying to come in for a hug. 

"Don't touch me," Billy says quickly, and the guy freezes. "Uh, sorry. Should we get going?”

“What about the van?” Kimberly cuts in.

“What about it?” Billy says. “It’s fixed.”

“No way,” Zack says. “There’s no way that thing’ll drive.”

“Try it,” Billy says, level as a wire, a smudge of grease on his cheek, standing tall next to the van that dragged them all the way from Long Island and’ll have to get them back, as though daring any of them to disagree.

“Okay,” Trini says, “there’s no way—” _he’s coming with us now,_ she’d meant to finish, or _he believes us after this,_ or even _he doesn’t think we’re all crazy,_ but—

“I’ll come,” the guy says, eyes bright and clear, and Trini has to take a moment to wonder.

“Who _are_ you?” she says, and he turns to her, lights up with a smile.

“My name is Jason,” he says. “So how are we gonna do this?”

 

* * *

 

The sun’s dipping low over the horizon before Zack announces that he’s gonna drop dead if they don’t eat anything soon. Kimberly had barely noticed the passage of time, driving with eyes set resolutely ahead, determined to put as many miles between her and the shitshow they’d left behind in Angel Grove as possible. Had ignored the rest of them ignoring each other in the backseats, Jason looking out the window the entire time, leaning his forehead against the glass. It’s only now, as she exits the interstate and scours the city for someplace to eat, that she realizes her hunger. When they file into a roadside diner, dirty and sweaty and stinking of the road, she has to blink away the spots in her vision. She’s been staring straight into the sunset in her rearview mirror all afternoon.

“I saw a payphone outside,” Jason says, as the rest of them settle into a booth. “I’ll make a call to my parents.”

“Good luck with that,” Zack says, and the moment Jason’s gone he turns to the others with a conspiratorial waggle of his eyebrows. “So, what d’you think? Athena?”

“He agreed to come with us, so he can’t be that smart,” Trini says with a snort.

“Something about him, though,” Billy mutters, almost to himself. “I dunno. Maybe he’s a son of Nike.”

“Who even cares?” Kimberly runs a finger through the condensation on her water glass. “He’s just another demigod, whatever. What I don’t get is what’s so special about him. Why he’s so important we had to fetch him for our quest.”

Trini rolls her eyes across the table, but doesn’t say anything, and Kimberly snaps. “Okay, _what?_ ” she says. “What is your problem? What’s been your problem this whole time?”

Trini gives her a startled look, like she hadn’t expected to be called out, but it quickly hardens, disappearing back under indifference. “You’re always complaining about the _quest,_ ” she says. “Like it’s not the one you wanted. Like it's yours alone. Like it’s the only thing that matters to you.”

“It _is_ the only thing that matters,” Kimberly says. “What else would be?”

Trini just looks at her. And then looks away. Shrugs. “It’s just so _typical,_ that’s all.” It’s muttered under her breath, but everyone hears it.

Kimberly clenches her fist under the table. Thinks of the look on Amanda’s face—not the hurt when she’d run off to cry in Ty’s arms nor the sneer when she’d stabbed a dagger into her photograph, but the brief moment of disbelief when she’d first found out what Kimberly had done, turning to stare at her in slow, ugly realization, as though only just beginning to understand. As though finally seeing her for what she was.

“You don’t know a _thing_ about me,” Kimberly says, “not one of you,” and she wishes it were true.

“Yeah?” Trini says, meeting her stare again. “What about us, then? Do you know a single thing about any of us?”

Which is when Jason comes back to their table, abruptly cutting the conversation short, so Kimberly’s left to pick at her burger and consider the question. Billy Cranston: Hephaestus kid, mostly hangs around the other members of his cabin, once blew up the dining pavilion by accident—or so he claimed. Zack Taylor: Hermes kid, one of countless, so surely she can’t be blamed for never really noticing the guy existed at all. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him once in all her summers of camp—not at training, not at mealtimes, not even at Capture the Flag. And _everybody_ shows up for Capture the Flag. Then, of course, there’s Trini. Kimberly eyes her over the table. Staring listlessly out the window, shredding her napkin into pieces, ignoring all of them like she’d rather be anywhere but here. Like she doesn’t even care. Then Trini glances up, catches Kimberly staring, and she quickly drops her gaze back down to her plate, wondering—not for the first time—why on earth the Oracle had chosen them. Why it had chosen _her._

“Yeah, Hades is real,” Billy’s saying, voice low as he arranges the fries on his plate in perfectly ordered lines. He’s taken it upon himself to educate Jason on every single myth in Greek history, it seems. “And so is the Underworld.”

“So that’s the answer, then?” Jason says. “That’s where we go, when we die?”

“One-way trip straight down to the Fields of Asphodel,” Zack says with his mouth full, “unless you were _really_ bad, in which case you get hell, or you were _really_ good, in which case you get heaven, and either way there’s no coming back out.” He shrugs, swallows. “Unless you’re Orpheus.”

“Or if you go for rebirth,” Kimberly says, ignoring Trini’s eyeroll from across the table. “For the Isles of the Blest.”

“Or if you’ve got the Physician’s Cure,” Billy says.

“What’s that?” Jason says.

“It brings you back to life,” Billy says. “From the dead.”

“Wouldn’t count on that one,” Zack says with a snort. “Just a myth.”

“Okay, so this Rita person, then,” Jason says, brow furrowed. “She’s a child of Hades? Does that mean she can’t die?”

“No,” Billy says, “it just means she’s powerful beyond measure. The first Hades kid in forever, and it all just went to her head. She massacred dozens of demigods because she wanted to be the only one. Just killed the other campers in their beds one night. No one saw it coming. Only Zordon—our current camp leader—survived, and was able to defeat her. Imprisoned her at the bottom of the ocean. But she’s back now, and with a vengeance, and even Camp Half-Blood won’t be able to keep her out.”

“Why don’t the gods just do something?” Jason asks. “Since they’re, you know, real and all?”

Zack seems to find this hilarious. “That’s what the gods do,” he says. “Nothing. It’s kind of their job. You’ll see.”

Jason frowns at him. “I don’t get it, though,” he says. “What on earth would Rita want from _me?_ ”

“You’re a demigod, aren’t you?” Kimberly says, not looking up from the remains of her burger.

“So you tell me,” Jason says.

“It’s kinda weird how you just slipped through the cracks, though,” Billy says. “Normally demigods get found out at puberty, if not earlier. It can’t be helped—we just attract too much danger. We’re too powerful.”

“Guess I’m just harmless, then,” Jason says.

“You’re something, that’s for sure,” Billy says, squinting at him. “Just haven’t figured you out yet.”

“Here’s something for you to figure out,” Kimberly says. “How’re we gonna afford motel rooms for the five of us tonight?”

“That’s easy,” Zack says. He’s spinning an onion ring around his finger. “We don’t. The sooner we get back to camp, the better.”

Kimberly groans. “You can’t be serious,” she says.

Zack grins at her. Slides on the pair of cheap sunglasses he’d picked up from a convenience store somewhere in Colorado, on the first leg of their trip. “I’m always serious.”

“As long as I’m not driving,” Billy says. “Not ever.”

“Dibs on shotgun,” Trini says, snatching the onion ring from Zack’s finger. Kimberly accidentally catches her eye across the table and Trini raises a questioning eyebrow in return. Pops the onion ring in her mouth and bites down. It shouldn’t feel like a challenge, but Kimberly stares back without blinking anyway.

“I’ll drive,” Zack says. Stretches in his seat, as though gearing up for battle. “Anyone up for dessert?”  

 

* * *

 

The van looks like a wreck and sometimes the vents start smoking, but to Zack’s amazement it still chugs steadily down the interstate, stubbornly clinging to life. “Attaboy,” he says, rubbing a hand over the wheel affectionately. It’s night by now, the highway before them lit up with the headlights of other cars, all on the same endless road going somewhere.

“It’s not a _boy,_ ” Billy says from the backseat, “it’s a machine, c’mon. Give it some respect.”

“It’s a Toyota family van, that’s what it is,” Zack says, and the van—doesn’t _rumble,_ exactly, under his hands, but makes some kind of ominous grinding noise, and he decides maybe he should stop shit talking the car. “Hey, Jason. How’d your parents take you running away with a crew of strange teenagers?”

“Not very well,” Jason answers good-naturedly, “considering my house arrest and everything.”

“How’d that happen, anyway?” Zack says. He’s reevaluating his guess in his head—Dionysus, maybe. No way he’s got Athena’s blood, considering his track record of bad decisions.

“I was supposed to be something for them,” Jason says, shrugging. “I didn’t step up to the plate, and they’ve never forgiven me for it.”

“Oo-kay,” Zack says. “Not cryptic at all. If you killed a dude you should just say so now and spare us the shock of finding out later.”

Jason looks at him in the rearview mirror. “I smuggled a cow into our high school locker room and then crashed my car trying to escape the police,” he says.

Zack’s surprised into a bark of laughter. “No way,” he says. Definitely Dionysus. The guy’s crazy.

“Yeah, so my parents weren’t pleased when I upped and left town in the middle of what the news is calling _the freak storm of the century,_ ” Jason says, air quotes and all, “but then I told them I found out I’m the kid of a Greek god and that shut them up pretty quick.”

“So is it your mom or your dad who’s the god?” Billy asks.

Jason shrugs. “Could be either. I’m adopted, and they still wouldn’t tell me. Just said I’d find out eventually, that they still wanted to keep me safe for as long as possible. Told me to be careful.”

Zack falls silent. Beside him, in the shotgun seat, Trini shifts a little, says nothing. This is what they’ve all got in common. Where they came from. One parent in one world, one parent in another. What’s different is how they got here. His own mother had told him from a young age; it was Zack who had never believed her. If the gods were real like she said they were, if one of them was his father like she said he was, then why wasn’t he here? Why didn’t he do anything? Why was his mother left alone on her bed, eyes sunken and skin sallow, telling stories of those who were beyond the reach of the dead and the living? “Shhh, ma,” Zack would always say, tucking her into bed, “just sleep,” but what did he know—one day a giant snake tried to take a bite out of him and all of a sudden he was being taken to a camp where they claimed everything was going to be all right, that he’d found where he was meant to be, that as a demigod, as a hero, he could do anything. Anything except for one thing. At any rate it’s flipped around, now. He tells his mother fake stories, of fantastic quests and legendary feats, of slaying a seven-headed hydra and plucking a golden apple from the Hesperides’ garden, of the impossible, and his mother smiles, pretends to believe him.

“Well, you’ll be safe at Camp Half-Blood,” Kimberly’s saying, but Billy shakes his head.

“Not against Rita,” Billy says. “She’s a demigod—the gates’ll let her right in.”

“Thanks, Billy,” Kimberly sighs.

“What?” Billy says. “It’s true. It’s a problem with the camp’s defense measures, and y’know, maybe when we get back I can do something to fix it.”

“Right,” Zack says, not looking up from the road. “Sure. You can do something. Big dreams, man.”

“Well, what else did the Oracle put us on this quest for?” Billy says with a shrug. “Something like that—it’s the only thing I can do.”

Zack’s grip tightens on the steering wheel. Right, he thinks. Of course Billy can do something—he’s a Hephaestus kid. Fixing things is his birthright. Meanwhile there's Zack, hovering above the treeline, skipping out on training to watch everyone else below him like a crowd of moving parts in miniature—until the day Zordon called him to the Big House, dragging him back down to the ground. And now that he’s here—what can he do, really? What’s he got to give?

“So, let me get this straight,” Jason says from the back. “You guys really took a quest without knowing what you had to do for it? Drove all the way across the entire country without knowing who you were looking for?”

Trini snorts. “Story of my life,” she says under her breath, muffled by the collar of her jacket from where she’s slouched in her seat.

“It sounds stupid, but it’s not, really,” Kimberly says, sounding like she’s trying to convince herself more than anyone else. “Quests for demigods—they go back millennia. It’s about rising to your duty. It’s about faith.”

“I don’t know about all that,” Zack says, flashing a grin. “I was just bored. And anyway, it all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“As far as quests go, this one’s pretty tame compared to my first, anyway,” Billy says, and every head in the car turns to stare at him. “What?”

“This isn’t your first quest?” Kimberly says, every word coloured with disbelief.

Billy blinks at her. “Uh—no?”

“No way,” Zack crows, “you’ve been holding out on us! What’d you do? Slay the Minotaur? The Nemean lion?”

“Nothing like that,” Billy says, looking deeply uncomfortable, like he regrets bringing it up in the first place. “It wasn’t really—that important, or anything—”

“The Golden Fleece?” Zack says. “The Sea of Monsters? Was it the Underworld? Did you come back from the Underworld?”

Billy shoots him a look. “Nobody comes back from the Underworld,” he says, and even Zack knows when he’s pushed too far, knows when to back down. He’s right, anyhow. Nobody comes back from the Underworld.

“How are you even so sure that I’m the one you’re meant to find?” Jason says, after a bit of an awkward silence.

“That’s what I said,” Trini says, slanting a look sideways at Zack, who pretends not to notice.

“You can see through the Mist,” Billy says. “You saw the skeletons. You’ve definitely got immortal blood in you.”

It’s a good answer, an easy one. Zack hadn’t even thought of that. All he'd been thinking when he was flying through the town with the skeletons on his heels and saw Jason standing shiny under the sunlight in his bright orange vest was that if this was a sign from the gods, he’d have to be blind to miss it. In the heat of the moment, he’d been certain of it. Now that he’s thinking back, well. Good thing he was right.

“It’s just a question of _whose_ blood,” Billy says, and just like that, the conversation steers back into smoother waters.

“Five bucks says it’s Dionysus,” Zack says.

“The god of _wine?_ ” Jason says, looking like he doesn’t know if he should be offended or not.

Zack waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Yeah, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff,” he says.

“No way,” Billy says. “I still think it’s Nike.”

“This is so wrong,” Kimberly says. Then—like she can’t help herself—“Iris.”

“The messenger god?” Billy says, turning to stare at her. “Why?”

“Hey,” Zack says, snapping his fingers at him. “There’s only one _true_ messenger god, okay. Show some _respect._ ”

“You are so going to get blasted off this road, and I do _not_ want to be in the same car with you when it happens,” Billy informs him.

“I don’t know,” Kimberly says, looking almost embarrassed. “Something about how we were sent all this way to fetch him. Like maybe _he’s_ a message. A message for us.”

“Uh, I’m sitting right here,” Jason says, from where he’s sandwiched between Billy and Kimberly.

“Hey, shut up, everyone,” Zack says suddenly. “Trini’s asleep.”

She’s knocked out like a light, that’s what she is, head lolling back against her seat and mouth slightly open. For a moment Zack feels bad—maybe he should’ve agreed to finding a motel. But he also can’t think of an easier way for Rita to come upon them in the middle of the night and kill them in their beds, which seems to be her typical modus operandi, according to Billy. As long as they’re on the move, on their way back to Camp Half-Blood, they’re the safest they can get. And when they get there, all this will be over. He'll be back to flying far out of reach from anyone, and his relief is thick as a sick taste in his mouth he can't wash out. 

“She was hurt pretty badly in the crash,” Kimberly says. Casual. “The worst of us, I think. Wouldn’t take any nectar or ambrosia, either.”

In her sleep Trini’s brow furrows, like she’s dreaming, and the rest of them fall silent to let her do just that.

 

* * *

 

“What did you do at school today?” her mother says, and her voice is not stretched thin with anxiety, or expectation, or anger, and Trini stares down at her plate. _If you eat something,_ she remembers, _you can stay here forever,_ and she keeps her mouth shut. Says nothing.

“Superman’s the best,” her brother’s saying. “He’s a god, but he lives like he’s less than one.”

“Trini, your dinner’s getting cold,” her mother says.

“No, Batman’s the best,” her other brother says. “He’s a human, but he lives like he’s more than one.”

“Trini, dear,” her mother says. “Look at me.”

Trini looks at her stepfather instead. His face is still shadowed, and she can’t quite make out his expression, but she knows he’s looking back at her. Waiting for her to speak. But she can’t do it. Her jaw aches with the weight of all she won’t let go through the clench of her teeth, because she knows if she says it something terrible will happen, some force will upend the ways of the world around her, and she’ll never be able to take it back.

She closes her eyes, keeps them shut for a long time. When she opens them again it’s morning. The sun just beginning to rise in the distance. They’re parked at a rest stop, and there’s nothing around but trees. The others are all still asleep—Zack’s drooling, dead to the world from where he’s cramped in the driver’s seat, feet propped up on the dashboard. Billy’s gonna kill him for that one. Trini shakes her head to herself, clears away the thought. Quietly opens the door and lets herself out.

In the thin light of dawn everything stands still and silent, like none of it is even real. Trini takes a moment to stretch out the crick in her neck, arms high over her head. Then she makes her way across the clearing, into the woods, until she finds a secluded spot, grass tickling at her ankles. The only sound is the hush of wind through the leaves. Perfect, she thinks, and she pulls out her headphones.

She gets halfway through _Great Is Our Sin_ before someone taps her on her shoulder, and Trini whirls around out of tree pose, fists already up—

“Hey,” Kimberly says, palms up in defense, “it’s just me. Relax. We were looking for you everywhere, I thought you’d—”

“What, run off?” Trini says, opting to go for the opposite of _relax._ “Is that what you think of me?”

Kimberly purses her lips. “No, I was going to say _gotten picked off by Rita in your sleep_ or something.”

Trini slowly drops her fists, plants both feet back on the ground. “So I’m that weak?” she says with a snort. “Can’t say that’s much better.”

She expects the same huff of annoyance, but to her surprise Kimberly just looks at her for a moment, considering. The corner of her mouth quirks up in a smile, of all things. “No,” she says. “I suppose you’re not.”

Trini eyes her warily. “Whatever,” she says, and she starts to head back for the van, but Kimberly stops her with a hand on her arm. Trini jerks back, away from her, but Kimberly doesn’t seem to be fazed.

“So, this quest, huh,” she says. It’s possibly the worst conversation starter Trini’s ever heard. She wordlessly casts her eyes up to the sky. Over two thousand miles to go. “You think it’s got something to do with us? Something we still need to do?”

“I think we should get back to doing it,” Trini says, and makes to leave again.

“Okay, come on,” Kimberly says, and there’s the exasperation again. Easy. “I know you don’t like me, and I don’t know you, but the Oracle called for us—together—for a reason, and I know you believe it too, so.” She shrugs. “Just talk to me.”

Just talk to her. Just talk to Kimberly Hart, daughter of Hecate, girl with all of Camp Half-Blood tucked under her thumb—before she screwed up, of course. Kimberly Hart, who’d never even looked once at Trini in all their summers at camp together until their names had been strung in the same spoken sentence—and now that she’s looking, she won’t look away. Kimberly Hart with her hair cut short and her eyes bright, standing tall under the rising sun like all of it means something. Staring straight at Trini like she does, too.

“I was seven when I found out I was a half-blood,” Kimberly says, because she doesn't know how to quit. “My father sat me down and read me a storybook, about the gods and heroes. Then told me all of it was true. Said I was one of them. I’ve gone to camp every summer since. Waited for the day I would get my own quest. And now I’m here, stuck in some car in the middle of nowhere, and I think I’d sacrifice Zack to the gods for a shower right now, so I guess you could say—I’m kind of out of my element right now. None of this is really what I expected.”

Trini raises an eyebrow. “Wow,” she says. “Did I forget I asked you for your life story, or what?”

“We’re _demigods,_ Trini,” Kimberly says, too earnest to be believed. “So yeah—maybe we don’t know each other. Maybe this isn’t what any of us wanted. But coming together under the worst of circumstances—it’s kind of what we do, right?”

And when, exactly, did they become a _we?_ They’re demigods, sure, and that’s about the only thing they have in common. People like Kimberly can rise to the occasion if they want to, claim the glory of their birthright, but Trini just wants to get by. Better to avoid the light of responsibility now, than be revealed under it later.

“You said that this quest was the only thing I cared about,” Kimberly says. Oh, god. She’s still not done. “And you were right. I mean, look at me.” She waves a hand at herself, and for the first time, Trini allows herself to do just that—look. Gold of the sunrise feathering through her hair, the line of her lashes, alighting on her lips. “I thought—back at camp I thought my life was over, I thought the world had ended for me, but it’s still going on. I’m still here. I came on this quest thinking it would remake me, but it’s more than that—because whatever it is that you’re running from, too? This quest is the answer. This quest is going to remake _us._ ”

“That’s nowhere near the same thing,” Trini says automatically, “that was something you did, this is—”

She bites down on her lip, hard. _Who I am._

Kimberly is still looking at her, Trini’s sure, but Trini’s stopped looking back, because she’d almost _forgotten_ —Kimberly Hart, daughter of the crossroads, the confusion of truth, the trick of the light. Looking awfully noble, almost tangible under the hard light of the sun, like if Trini only just extended her arm, Kimberly could be reached, could be touched. The only real danger of this quest.

“Not all of us want to play the hero,” Trini says. It rings too close to the truth, but she’s oddly drained, too exhausted to fight back. “Maybe I just want to _be._ ”

A pause. Wind rustling the leaves of trees, the grass under their feet. “Is that really all you want?” Kimberly says, slow and quiet, but this time when Trini starts to walk away, she doesn’t stop her, and Trini doesn’t look back.

Back at the van Zack’s sitting on the hood, eating a bag of M&M’s, wearing his ugly plastic sunglasses. He nods at her in greeting.

“Hey, crazy girl,” Zack says. “You ready to go home?”

You climb up a cliff _once_ to avoid talking to a guy, and he never lets you forget it. Trini suppresses an eyeroll, gets back in the car. Accidentally on purpose slams the door loud enough to wake up Billy and Jason, who’re still sprawled all over each other, snoring.

“Can’t wait,” Trini says to herself. The sun’s already risen, rendering the world in perfect light, and she stares down the open road before her through the cracked glass of the windshield.

 

* * *

 

Billy doesn’t drive. Just claims his turn in shotgun and watches Jason test out every button on the dashboard. “That’s the air conditioning, and that’s the windshield wipers, and those are the defense spikes—no no no, _don’t_ press it—”

“What about that one?” Jason asks, and Billy settles back in his seat with a grin.

“That one, you can try,” Billy says.

Jason presses the button with a heavy air of anticipation, and the entire van groans in collective misery as George Strait’s voice starts crooning out of the speakers.

“Come on, guys,” Billy says. “We’re in the desert, man, it’s perfect. What else would we listen to, besides good old country music?”

“The sweet, sweet sound of silence,” Zack mumbles from the backseat. His window’s rolled all the way down and he’s practically hanging out of it, like he’s trying to escape.

“It’s not that bad,” Jason says diplomatically.

“See!” Billy says. “He agrees!”

“I’m this close to pushing both of you out of this car,” Trini says.

“It’s _my_ car!” Billy says.

Trini gives him a look. “So?”

Outside, the signs whistle past, counting down the miles. Billy hums along with the music, looks out the window at the endless sprawl of earth under the clear morning sky. The world’s a perfect picture of peace, but Billy’s brain won’t shut up about things he already knows, until he has to turn to the rest of them, so he can tell someone who doesn’t.

“This was my dad’s favourite song,” Billy says. Trini’s got her headphones on by now, and Kimberly looks like she’s dozing off again, and Zack’s stolen one of Billy’s comics from his backpack to read, so Jason’s the only one who really hears him.

“What?” Jason says, slanting his gaze at him. “You’re kidding. Hephaestus has a thing for country music?”

“Oh, no, not him,” Billy says. “Maybe, I dunno, I never met him—think I’ll ask him if I ever do, though. I meant my stepdad. Played this song all the time. Owned all the CDs, and my mom kept threatening to throw them out, ’cause she got so sick of it.” He drums his fingers against the dashboard absentmindedly. “Grew up listening to this, so I guess I just got used to it.”

Jason doesn’t say anything, so Billy figures he can keep talking. “It’s been seven years,” Billy says. “Seven years, nine months, and eighteen days, and my mom, she cries every time she hears this song so I don’t play it where she can hear, but I still like it. I like to remember. I’m good at it. Humour, sarcasm—those aren’t my thing, but I’m good at remembering. I’m on the spectrum, see.”

“Okay, Billy,” Jason says. Rubbing at his jaw. “You don’t have to tell me all of this. We’re cool.”

“Are we?” says Billy. “Are you cool with this? Because if I were you, if I’d just found out everything you did, I’d be kinda freaking out right now.”

He looks over at him, but Jason’s already looking back, watching him. Waiting to see where he's going with this. Like he's gonna follow him there.

“My stepdad,” Billy says. “’Course I always thought of him as my real dad—he’d been around forever. We used to go out exploring together. There was an old mine—we were always there trying to dig up stuff, trying to find what everyone else’d left behind. He took me up there one day when I was twelve and told me the truth. My mom was furious—thought it would put me in danger. I mean, she was right, of course. After that I had to go to camp, had to learn. But still—everything worth knowing, I learned from him.”

Jason’s looking back at the road, again. Still silent.

“I mean,” Billy says. “It’s gotta be hard, not knowing. So I thought I could let you know something, at least. Anything.”

It’s what his stepdad had taught him to do: lay it all out in a way that makes sense. Because surely none of this does, for Jason, and all Billy can do is help clear up the magic, the mystery of the world, the same way his stepdad had for him.

“I’m just saying,” Billy says. “If you have any questions. You can ask.”

Jason shifts in his seat, adjusts his hand on the steering wheel. “Okay,” he says. “What’s it like?”

Billy frowns. “What’s what like?”

Jason waves a hand vaguely in the air. “Being a half-blood,” he says.

Oh. Well. Billy thinks about it. “It’s kinda crazy, really,” he says. “Like— _gods,_ am I right? And you get taken to this camp and there’s wood nymphs staring at you from the trees and pegasi in the stables and people straight up going at each other with real swords and armor and you’re like, whoa. Pinch me. But it’s not a dream, and after a while you kind of—you kind of get used to it. Because it’s still crazy, yeah, it never stops being crazy, but that crazy is sort of what makes sense now. It’s like—you understand the world a bit better, ’cause you know there’s a place for you, and you know what that place is. So you roll with the monsters and the magic and every few weeks some new kid gets claimed and everyone stops in the middle of dinner to stand up and cheer and—it’s awesome,” Billy says. “It’s really, _really_ awesome.”

He looks up. Jason’s smiling. Rubbing a hand over his chin.

“Huh,” Jason says. “You know what else is crazy?”

“What?”

“I believe you.”

Billy considers this for a moment. Breaks into a smile. “Cool,” he says. “Anything else?”

Jason thinks about it. “The situation we’re in,” he says. “Is it really that bad?”

“Oh, yeah,” Billy says with a wince. “It’s bad. Hades kids have powers of death, an affinity with metals—Rita’s is gold—and they’re considered one of the Big Three: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon. None of them have had kids in decades, not since Rita herself, because she almost wiped us all out. Their children are too powerful, see, and now that she’s back, I don’t know how she’s going to be defeated.”

A beat of silence. “Wow,” says Jason. “That’s optimistic.”

“It’s the truth,” Billy says with a shrug. “Once we get you back to camp, I’m sure Zordon’s got a plan. I’m sure he’ll have it figured out.”

“Hm,” says Jason, and he’s silent for a long time, so long Billy thinks he’s done, but then—“One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The goddess you think is my parent—Nike. Can you tell me anything about her?”

Billy hasn’t met any of the gods, not once, but he knows the stories like the back of his hand. “Goddess of victory,” he says. “Strength and speed. Blesser of glory and fame to the worthy. In one hand the wreath of victory, in the other the branch of peace.” A pause, and he cracks a grin. “Plus, her chariot is super cool.”

“The worthy, huh?” says Jason. His voice’s gone quiet. “Nothing in my whole life’s ever felt like a victory.”

“Well,” says Billy. “I’ve got good news for you, because your ‘whole life’ is just beginning.”

A moment passes, and then Jason turns to Billy with a laugh, shaking his head. “Okay,” he says, accepting it, and then—“Thanks, Billy.” 

“For what?” Billy says. Leans his head back against the seat—and catches sight of the other three in the backseats, in the rearview mirror. All of them awake, alert. Clearly having been listening to the whole thing, the whole time. Figures.

“Y’know what,” Jason says. “I’m starved. Let’s go get lunch.”

“Sure,” says Billy. “But, uh. Just so you know. Before we do that—someone drew a dick on your face last night while you were sleeping, and it’s, uh, it’s kinda still there.”

Jason stills for a moment to consider this. Then— _“Zack!”_

 

* * *

 

They’re almost out of Nebraska when Trini lets out a yell in the backseat and Zack slams the brakes so hard Kimberly almost chokes herself on her seatbelt. “What,” she says, “what is it,” and when she twists her head around Billy’s eyes are huge and Trini’s pressed flat against the side of the car to avoid—the _sword_ Jason’s clutching in his hands.

“What the hell, dude,” Zack says, pulling over on the shoulder of the road. “Keep it in your pants, will you?”

“I don’t—” Jason splutters. “I don’t even know where this came from!” He drops the sword like he’s been burned, and the moment it leaves his hands it’s not a sword anymore. A single coin bounces against the floor of the van, rolls to a stop by his feet.

“You had it the whole time?” Billy says. “Thought Zordon’d give you something at camp, but—”

“Had _what?_ ” says Jason. “That’s—that’s the penny I picked up, from the sidewalk! I was holding it just now and then it got warm and suddenly—”

“It’s not a penny,” Trini says, finally detaching herself from the car window, real casual, like she’d never done it in the first place. “Careful where you use it—you almost poked my eye out.”

“Use _what,_ ” Jason says, and he looks so lost for once that Kimberly takes pity on him.

“It’s your weapon,” she says. “Should’ve known it’d find you, too. Everything else already has.”

They decide to take Jason through a crash course— _outside_ the car this time. Leaving it illegally parked by the side of the highway, they find a secluded spot in the distance, sheltered by trees. Jason stretches out his leg, still stuck in the brace. 

“Okay,” says Billy. “Take out your coin.”

Jason holds it between his thumb and forefinger, looking uncertain. Looking at it, Kimberly has to wonder how on earth the guy had mistaken it for a penny. Wrong size, wrong weight. Only a slight red tinge bears any resemblance to the glint of copper.

“Watch and learn,” Zack says. He’s got a coin, too. Flips it and smacks it down onto his palm. Closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again, he’s holding his axe in his hands.

“How,” says Jason, but he falls silent as one after another, the rest of them toss their coins into the air. Billy’s lance. Trini’s daggers. Kimberly’s bow, and a quiver of gleaming, pink-tipped arrows.

“Do yours,” Kimberly says.

“Just don’t stab yourself by accident or something,” Zack says.

Jason hefts the coin in his palm. Hesitates. Flips the coin, and it lands on the face of the sword. A half-second of stillness—a light breeze in the air, filtering the sunlight over their faces—and then the sword is rematerializing in Jason’s hand, elongating into a black grip and a red hilt and a long, gleaming blade. A set of gold laurels is engraved into the handle, cradling the blade of the sword.

“Swear he’s gotta be Nike’s kid,” Billy says with a low whistle. “That looks _wicked._ ”

“Think fast!” Zack shouts, and then Jason’s wrenching back, startled, raising his sword in a knee-jerk reaction as Zack flies at him with his axe. The two weapons meet in a clang of metal that reverberates all around the clearing, and Jason staggers backward.

“What the _hell,_ ” he says, as Zack steps back again with a shrug. “Are you crazy? Why’d you just try to kill me?”

“Oh, come on,” Zack says. “If that’s all it takes to kill you, then you’re definitely not a half-blood. I just wanted to see.”

“See _what,_ ” Jason says, but Kimberly gets it. Takes a step forward, studying the hold of the sword in Jason’s hand, the positioning of his arms, the wary guard of his posture, and years and years of training kick in.

“Hey, hotshot,” Kimberly says. “Forget your sword for now. You know anything about basic combat?”

“I’m a high school football quarterback,” Jason says. He drops the sword onto the ground, and it turns back into his coin, which he pockets. “Or at least, I was.”

“So that’s a hard _no,_ then,” Kimberly says, rolling her eyes, and then she drops her bow and arrow to the grass, beckons with a finger. “Come on,” she says. “Try it.”

Jason stares at her. “Excuse me?”

Kimberly gestures impatiently. “Come on,” she repeats. “Let’s see what you’ve got in you.”

“Uh,” Billy says. “Not sure if this is such a good idea.”

Kimberly ignores him. Just waits. Jason’s still hesitant, but he raises his fists, drops into a battle stance—or at least what some teenager who watches too many action movies’ idea of a battle stance is. Kimberly suppresses the urge to roll her eyes again. This is important. If—when—they come up against Rita again, she has to know what Jason’s capable of.

“The first move is yours,” Kimberly says.

“I’m not going to _hit_ you,” Jason says.

Kimberly smiles, cocks her head. Bounces back and forth on the heels of her feet. “No, you aren’t,” she agrees. “But I want you to try.”

Jason studies her for a while. Kimberly can pinpoint the exact moment he realizes she’s serious, and decides to be serious in return. He lunges forward, and Kimberly shifts her weight on her feet, dodges him easily.

“That the best you got?” Kimberly says. Glances over at Zack. “No kid of Ares, that’s for sure.”

“Told you,” Zack says. “Beauty over brawns, he’s gotta be Aphrodite’s.”

“Okay, c’mon,” Billy says, “the guy’s got a bad leg, and you’re a camp _counselor,_ for god’s sake—”

Jason goes for it, but Kimberly’s ready for him. Blocks his punch with his arm, and then the next one. Dances out of the way of his grab, and maybe the macho football quarterback’d start getting embarrassed right about now, but Kimberly sees the upturned quirk to Jason’s mouth, the sudden flare of interest in his eyes. He gets it, she thinks—of course he does. He’s one of them. He’s learning as much about himself right now as he is about her—that’s what training means, and it’s _fun,_ and she ducks low under the swing of his fist.

“Yeah, kick his ass,” Zack whoops, but Kimberly hasn’t made a move of her own yet. She’s still finding out what Jason can do. So is Jason. He comes at her with fists up, but Kimberly senses the feint, dodges his kick instead. Catches the right hook that he’s ready and waiting with.

“Not bad,” she says. “You’ve got the right instincts in you. You’ve just got to learn how to use them.”

And then she flips him over her shoulder, lays him out flat on his back in the grass.

“Oof,” says Jason.

Kimberly laughs, holds out a hand to help him out. But something’s changed, now. A charge to the air. Five half-bloods cooped up in a car for so long, and now they’re out in the open. Now they’re in their element, set wild, free. Kimberly hasn’t quite broken a sweat, but her blood is pumping, body waking up. Remembering what it’s meant for. And from the looks of it, the others aren’t any different.

“Get out your sword again,” Zack says. “Let’s have another go.”

“Is that an innuendo,” Jason says with a raise of an eyebrow.

“Come at me,” Billy says with a grin, brandishing his lance at the both of them.

And while they’re all distracted Kimberly looks past them. Sees Trini, arms folded across her chest, looking unimpressed. Trini, who senses what she’s about to do the instant their eyes meet.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Trini says. “Don’t you dare—”

Whatever she was going to say gets cut off as she ducks out of the way of Kimberly’s fist. Kimberly doesn’t let up, grabbing for Trini’s arm and wrenching her into a headlock, but Trini mercilessly jabs her elbow into her gut and wrestles out of her grip, falling into a roll under Kimberly’s kick and coming back up on her feet. She blocks everything Kimberly’s got to give her, meets her blow for blow, and just when Kimberly thinks she’s got her cornered Trini rears up and _headbutts_ her, sends her staggering back across the grass. Catches Kimberly’s arm and twists it up behind her back, but Kimberly sweeps their legs out from under their feet, and they go down even as the adrenaline in Kimberly’s chest is soaring up, up, up—

And suddenly there’s the blade of a dagger pressed up against her throat, pinning her to the ground. Kimberly goes perfectly still, all of her, except for the thrill of her blood rushing through her body, the rising roar in her ears that won’t die down.

“Hey,” Kimberly says, carefully. The knife edge to her neck. “That’s cheating.”

Trini shrugs. “I got you, didn’t I?”

Kimberly lets go of the breath she’d been holding into a laugh. The movement sends the blade digging into her skin, and it’s instantly gone, Trini backing away, staring down at her as Kimberly slowly gets back on her feet. Eyes unreadable as the rest of her, now that they’re back to standing apart.

“Yeah,” Kimberly says. “Yeah, you did.”

In the distance Zack yelps. “Watch it—you almost took off my hand there—”

“Sorry, sorry,” says Jason. Jerking his sword away, and almost taking out Billy’s eye.

“Looks like you’re gonna need a lot more practice,” Billy says, eyeing the blade swaying dangerously close to his face, before it shrinks back into a coin balanced on Jason’s palm. “It’s interesting, though.”

“What is?” Kimberly asks, rejoining them.

“That all our weapons take the form of coins,” Billy says. “Don’t you think?”

They hold their coins out, each of them, in their hands. A circle. Each glows a different colour. Blue, black, pink, yellow. And red.

“Well,” Billy says. “I guess it should’ve been obvious that we’d have something to do with each other, right?”

“It was fate,” Kimberly says. Believes it.

“It was luck,” Zack says, shrugging.

“It is what it is,” Trini says. She looks annoyed. Whatever rise Kimberly’d coaxed out of her is long gone. “Can we get back to the road now, or what?”

 

* * *

  

“What did you do at school today?” her mother says, and Trini’s tired, even if she knows that she’s asleep, that this is a dream, that none of this is real. None of it means anything at all.

“It doesn’t matter,” Trini says dully, and waits for the world to end. “It doesn’t matter what I say, because you won’t listen, anyway, because you never listen. Nobody ever listens to me. Nobody really wants to know.”

But maybe she’d overestimated her own power, because nothing happens. The rest of her family continues eating, speaking as though she hasn’t said anything at all. Her brothers, arguing about gods and humans. Her mother, wiping her mouth on a napkin. Only her stepfather turns to look her in the face, and for the first time Trini realizes he isn’t her stepfather at all.

“Then what does?” he says quietly. “What is it, Trini, that really matters?”

Trini sits there, fork clenched in her fist, her family eating and chattering around her, and knows the answer. Lets it sink like a stone through her gut and she still can’t spit it out.

“What,” her father says, “is the truth,” and Trini wakes up instead of answering.

They’re in the van. Of course they’re in the van—there’s nowhere else to be. Kimberly driving next to her, the others in the back. Trini must’ve drifted off, her head lolling back against the headrest, neck stiff, legs cramped. It’s funny—on the way to Angel Grove she hadn’t slept a wink. Couldn’t stand the thought of closing her eyes against three strangers who hadn’t even known her name before it came out of the Oracle’s ancient rotting mouth. Now Trini can’t stop having these dreams, keeps opening her eyes to a world that’s still exactly the same when she wakes up, unchanged, unmoved, and it galls her, almost—that she had kept her vigils for nothing. That none of the hours she’d spent staring down the night had mattered; in the end, the slow and steady rise of the sun would make her blink, every time.

It’s almost evening, now. They’ll have to pull over to find somewhere for dinner soon. The sun’s low in the sky but still shines too bright to look at, so Trini tilts her head slightly, watches Kimberly instead. The setting sunlight runs gold over the profile of Kimberly’s features, catches in her eyelashes, the ends of her hair, the tips of her fingernails drumming against the steering wheel. Sets the side of her face in shadow.

When the rumours had blown up, when Amanda Clark had stabbed a dagger through Kimberly’s photograph and pinned it to the wall of the girl’s bathroom, Trini had thought—good. She deserved it. The spell was broken, and now she’d finally revealed herself for who she really was. There’d always been something a bit too hard to the surface of her smile; a fire burning that fast would only ever go out. Then Kimberly had emerged from the bathroom with her hair cut short and ragged, a glint of something new in her eye, something Trini hadn’t seen before. Hadn’t known to expect. But now, Trini sits quietly in the passenger seat and remembers saying _the crossroads,_ and the way Kimberly had looked at her then, sharp. She must have taken it for recognition. All her talk of this quest, like she believed in it—like she believed that they were all something more than themselves. It makes sense, really, that the daughter of transformation itself would try to reveal herself as something new, something different. Would demand the same for Trini.

But Trini knows better, because you can’t change yourself, and it certainly isn’t as easy as shearing off a good few inches of hair. As though the truth is that easy to leave behind, when Trini’s been carrying it her entire life, has long since let it stew into something bitter.

Still, though. Looking at Kimberly in the light is almost enough to believe. So Trini lets herself do just that for just a moment longer.

In the backseat the boys are talking. Have been for a while, probably. Trini decides to listen; she’s too tired to do anything else, even with the nap she’s just had. This is a different brand of exhaustion, far too bleak, too bone-deep to shake off. This is the inevitability of a breaking point, and call it intuition, call it instinct, call it a divine gift from her father, but Trini knows what’s coming next. At some point, something’s got to give. It won’t be Trini, though—she’s good at holding onto things. Isn’t going to let go now.

“No way,” Jason’s saying. “You _blew up_ the cafeteria?”

“Okay, it’s a dining pavilion, not a cafeteria,” Billy says, like that’s the most important thing. “And it wasn’t on purpose—I was just testing something out—defense measures for the camp, Zordon _approved_ of the project, you know—I don’t see what’s so funny about it—”

“It was hilarious,” Zack says. He’s eating another bag of M&M’s, sunglasses perched high on his head. “Demigods running around like headless chickens, convinced we were under attack, unsure of where exactly it was coming from. Going at each other with swords. You singed all the hair right off Colt Wallace’s head.”

“And he’s never let me forget it since,” Billy says mournfully.

“And, oh man,” Zack says, turning to Jason, “I almost forgot the best part. Eventually Billy himself climbs on top of a table—the Aphrodite table, no less—and hollers that everything’s fine, he just had an accident. But he’s still covered head to toe in soot, and his clothes are straight-up smoking, so he looks like he just crawled right out of Tartarus, and someone screams out—no joke— _it’s a sign sent from Hades!_ The chaos was unbelievable. The Aphrodite kids, they loved it, though. Good thing, or else he’d probably have been cursed with bad acne for the rest of his life or something.” Zack pauses. Pops an M&M into his mouth. “It was great, man. You should’ve been there.”

The conversation breaks off for a moment, as all of them consider the truth of that statement.

“It just doesn’t make sense that you only just found out you’re a half-blood,” Billy says. “I mean—even if you don’t know it, the world does. And the world doesn’t exactly treat demigods nicely.”

“Ah, yes,” Zack says, wrinkling his nose. “I still remember that giant snake from time to time. Went through all that trouble of chasing me down when I was thirteen. Pity I had to behead it with a kitchen knife. Coolest thing that ever happened to me in all my years of living at that trailer park, and let me tell you, I’ve seen some shit.”

Jason squints at him. “A giant snake? You’re pulling my leg, right?”

Zack bares his teeth at him. “Guess you’ll never know.”

“It’s probably the truth,” Trini says, forgetting about keeping silent.

Zack turns to look at her. “Why, thank you, Sleeping Beauty,” he says. “Good nap?”

“Because he doesn’t have the imagination to make it up,” Trini finishes.

“Not so good nap then.”

“Also because something like that happens to literally everyone at some point,” Kimberly joins in. “Seriously, Jason—you don’t ever remember seeing _anything_ weird? It might not even be a monster—just anything out of the ordinary at all.”

Jason thinks about it. For a moment it looks like he’s considering something, but then—“Hmm. Guess I must be the kid of the least important Greek god that ever lived.”

“Great,” Trini says, because she’s feeling mean. “Guess Zack’s got a new half-brother.”

Zack throws an M&M at her head. “Rude.”

Trini plucks the M&M out of her hair and eats it, ignoring the face Zack makes at her in the rearview mirror.

“In any case,” Jason says, “I’m sorry I missed out on all the fun Billy caused.” A pause. “It sounds like it was a _blast._ ”

“Shut up,” Trini says immediately.

“Wait, what,” Billy says. “Was that a joke? Was that supposed to be funny?”

“No,” Zack says. “It wasn’t.” He throws an M&M at Jason, who catches it in his mouth and looks very pleased with himself.

Kimberly laughs. There are bags under her eyes, and her unwashed hair’s sweaty in the summer heat, scraped up into a bun. The nape of her neck is pale, unmarked by sun. Trini imagines settling the palm of her hand there, running her fingers through the escaped strands of hair. Wonders if her skin would feel warm to the touch.

And then Kimberly looks at her, as though sensing her stare.

Trini’s breath catches in her throat—but she doesn’t look away. Holds her gaze.

This is what her father wanted from her, after all.

When Kimberly looks away first, back at the road, Trini feels it as a victory, but it doesn’t hurt any less. It's what any demigod learns soon enough—the price of winning a battle. How you carry every bruise and broken bone with you long after the glory's worn off; it's the legacy that runs in your blood, after all. Trini tilts her head back, looks out the window. Watches the sun sink down towards the edge of the earth, inch by blinding inch.

 

* * *

 

“Well, this is it,” Zack says. “World’s largest egg. What do you think?”

The others stare blankly at him. Then at the egg.

“Kinda thought it’d be a real egg, huh,” Zack says. “Concrete seems like cheating, right?”

They’re in Indiana. Mentone, small town of a thousand people, and the Egg Basket of the Midwest, if the sign is to be believed. It had been his turn to drive after dinner, but Zack found that he couldn’t quite stay still through the slow crawl of the hours, nothing but miles and miles of dusty road behind and before him. Fingers drumming against the steering wheel, knee jiggling in place, feet tapping against the pedals, until he’d seen a sign by the side of the highway that said _World’s Largest Egg_ and he’d taken the escape of the exit without even thinking about it. Nobody had said anything, and they still haven’t yet, gathered around the very white, very concrete, very underwhelming egg.

“Doesn’t seem very big, does it,” Trini says.

“Hey,” says Billy. “I’m sure whoever made it worked really hard.”

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly says. “I think I missed something. Why are we here, again?”

And Jason’s just—surveying the stupid egg with far too serious a look in his eye, and Zack’s tricked into thinking that maybe he’s onto something really insightful, something that’ll make it all make sense, but when he opens his mouth all he’s got to say is, “God, it’s ugly.”

Zack laughs for what feels like forever. Bends over with his hands on his knees, wheezing until the last of his breath has left him, and only then does Jason put a hand on his shoulder, careful. Steady. The last time someone’d touched Zack had been his mother, sending him off to another summer at camp with a brush of lips against his forehead. Neither of them had voiced the possibility that this could be the last time. That hadn’t stopped either of them from thinking it.

“C’mon,” Jason says. “You ready to go?”

But Zack isn’t, not really, even when he’s back behind the steering wheel and they’re back on the highway, and all he can think is that none of it matters, not the mythology, not the magic, and least of all the mundane. His mother, alone in their mobile home as he’s out here pretending to be something he’s not, playing soldier for a purpose he doesn’t know, acting the filial son for a father he’s never met. He can stand there before something man-made and meaningless and feel just as small as he does when he stands in front of his cabin at camp. None of this is ever going to make him bigger or better—none of this is going to change a thing—so what’s the point, then, riding out the restlessness that stretches on for miles and miles and never seems to have an end?

It’s not so much a deliberate action as it is a slow shift, as Zack presses down harder on the accelerator in increments, watching the slow tick of the speedometer’s needle rise ever higher. The road blurs until Zack can’t see it at all, and now the others are beginning to take notice, Jason saying something he doesn’t hear in the passenger seat, Billy starting to shout, but Zack just lets out a whoop, and—

—swerves the van to avoid crashing into a bus, right off the road and into the crunch of gravel, barrelling straight through a highway sign and skidding through the grass, until the whole thing finally comes to a groaning, shuddering stop.

Zack blinks. The edge of his seatbelt’s cutting into his skin. The speedometer’s back to zero.

“Oops,” he says, when his ears have stopped ringing.

A car door slams. It’s Kimberly—she’s gotten out of the van. The rest of them are climbing out, too, all and Zack unbuckles his seatbelt, sits there for a moment watching them yell. Fuck it, he thinks. Opens his door.

Surprisingly, it’s Jason who comes up to meet him, finger jabbing into his chest. “Are you crazy?” he demands, eyes flashing. It’s the first time Zack’s seen him angry. The sight of it knocks him off kilter for a moment—the guy’s taken everything else in stride so far, and Zack doesn’t really get why this would be the breaking point.

“Yeah, I am,” Zack says, putting on his brightest, most obnoxious grin, and Jason falls back a little, considering it. Considering him, in a new light. And Zack doesn’t really want to see what he comes up with, so he looks away, at the wreck instead. It shouldn’t be that bad, really, but the front fender’s busted up from the sign, and everything that was already falling apart from the train crash looks like it’s now decided to let go, hood crunched up and grilles smoking and glass splintering from the windshield. Zack lets out a low whistle. Rises slightly on his heels, wings on his shoes catching the wind, lifting him a couple inches above the ground.

“Damn,” he says, and then he catches the look in Billy’s eyes, and he’s almost sorry, for a moment—

“What have you _done?_ ” Billy says, hands clutching at his head. “You ruined everything—it was gonna last, it was gonna hold out—I have to fix this.”

“We don’t have any other way of getting to camp,” Kimberly says, shaking her head. “We’re going to be out here like sitting ducks for Rita. What the hell were you thinking?”

“What is your problem?” Trini says, glaring up at him. “Is this all just a joke to you?”

“You could have _killed_ us,” Jason says, standing there in the sprawl of weeds and dead grass in the middle of nowhere, looking righteous when he doesn’t even know whose blood he’s inherited it from, and Zack doesn’t have the heart to break it to him: that none of it means anything at all.

They’re not far from a nearby town; past the trees, Zack can make out the shape of buildings. They could get the van there somehow, get it fixed. Find a place to stay for the night. But looking at the four of them, staring at him waiting for an answer, Zack knows something’s got to give. Knows it’s gonna have to be him.

He lets the wings on his shoes flutter to a still, comes back down to the ground.

“Hey,” Zack says. “I got an idea.”

 

* * *

 

A flick of Zack’s lighter gets the campfire started, and with the crackle of the flames Kimberly settles down into her spot on the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees. It’s hot enough to be uncomfortable, dry spell of the summer having long since bled into the barren earth, the dead grass, the cracked skin of her palms, but she sits close to the fire anyway, reaches out to its warmth. Stares into the blaze and thinks of the bonfire at camp at the the height of its glory, twenty feet tall and burning bright and gold and never going out. She wonders if it’s still burning now, miles away, like a beacon marking their way home. Waiting for them.

“Anyone got any marshmallows?” Zack says.

Kimberly slides her gaze over to him, unimpressed. He’s taken off his sunglasses, folded them up and hung them from the collar of his shirt. In the flicker of the fire Zack’s face is shadowed, obscuring the shape of his features, the line of his mouth into something less recognizable. A side to him she’s never seen, like the eclipsed face of the moon. It’s only in the uncertain darkness of the night that Kimberly remembers: he’s only a stranger.

“Could you be serious for even just a minute,” Jason says, arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m always serious,” says Zack, and there it is. Suddenly he’s lit up again in familiarity and Kimberly can see straight through the crack of his smile. He’s deflecting. Kimberly measures the move like a defense tactic on the battlefield. Just needs a weakness to get through to him, and Billy rises up to the plate with all the blunt force of his lance.

“Look,” Billy says. “My stepfather died in that van. In the exact seat where you were sitting. So I gotta know, man. I gotta know why you did that. What you thought it was worth.”

Zack deflates with pinpoint accuracy, and Kimberly averts her gaze, because defeat has always been the one thing she can’t quite bear to look at. Doesn’t know how to face.

“Okay,” Zack says. “Let’s do this. I gotta—I gotta say something.” He leans back, puts his hands on his knees, cross-legged. “My name is Zack, and I’m a son of Hermes.”

They all stare at him for a long moment.

“Hi, Zack,” Trini says eventually, and Zack gives a jerky nod in response, looking relieved.

“I live in a mobile home park,” he says. “With me and my mom. We’ve been together my whole life. Just the two of us. And my mom—she’s the best, you hear me?” He cups his hands around his mouth, raises his voice. “The best!”

Kimberly almost laughs, but the ring of his voice doesn’t quite match the glint in his eyes. A hollow reflection of the firelight, empty save for the echo.

There’s a pause.

“But she’s sick,” Zack says. Voice gone quiet again. He looks down at his lap, splays a palm over his knee. “She’s sick, and I can’t do anything at all, and you know—the training and the quests and the legends—they don’t mean a thing to me, because if she goes—” He tightens his grip on his knee. “When she’s gone—I won’t have anything left.”

Another pause. “And the gods?” Zack says. Something harder in his voice now, almost brittle. “They don’t give a shit about us. So why should I?”

He looks at all of them like he expects an answer, but then his gaze lingers, stops on Trini. Staring back at him, eyes glittering in the dark, silent.

“And you?” Zack says, after a moment. “What about you? What’s _your_ problem, crazy girl?”

Trini looks at him for so long Kimberly thinks she’s never going to speak, but then—

“Why would you ever believe anything I have to say?” Trini says, voice low. “I could say anything at all. You’d never know. None of you would ever know.”

Zack shrugs. “Maybe not,” he says. “But you would. You’d know it’s the truth.”

And for some reason that’s all it takes for Trini to clench her eyes shut. Drag out a breath through her lungs. Open her eyes again, to stare blankly up at the sky.

“We move around a lot,” Trini says, and Kimberly can’t help but lean forward, because she’s saying something at long last, after all this time. “My family. And they don’t say it, but I know it’s because of me. Because that’s the part they never tell you about at camp—that danger has a knack of showing up on your doorstep when you’re a demigod, and I’ve got two little brothers who haven’t got the slightest clue, who still think that monsters are cool. That superheroes are real. So it’s been three schools in three years, now, and you know what—I even like it that way. It’s easier. I don’t ever have to get to know anyone, and nobody ever has to get to know me, and my parents don’t have to worry— _I_ don’t have to worry about my relationships.”

Kimberly’s mind is a bit slow to catch up. Still stuck on the memory of Trini never once raising her head at camp, never once joining in on the glory. The fact that Kimberly hadn’t even known a name to put to the face before they’d stood next to each other in the Big House, eyeing each other up like the strangers they weren’t supposed to be, not after five years of sharing the same summers. It’s Zack who looks up, squints through the firelight, looking thoughtful.

“What,” he says. “Boyfriend problems?”

Trini holds herself perfectly still. Says nothing, and Zack looks again, a little more carefully.

“Girlfriend problems,” Zack says slowly, and it’s not really a question. Kimberly sucks in a breath—oh. The sharp noise of it is loud in the stillness of the night, all of their senses hyperaware of the crackling of the embers and the rustling of the grass and every move they make, but thankfully no one pays her any attention. They’re all fixated on Trini, whose gaze still lies stubbornly on the stars overhead. Like she’s not even speaking to them, but to someone else, above.

“See, everyone’s so fixated on _labels,_ ” Trini says. “Where you’re from. Who’s your parent.” A pause, and her voice does not tremble, even if it sounds stretched awfully thin. “Who you like. All they ever want is to make you what they want to see. So you try—you try to get by, you really do. Put your head down and stay out of the way and don’t make a mess. Don’t make a noise. But it’s never gonna be enough. Not for them, and—” she hesitates—“not for you.”

They let that sink in for a while. Kimberly still can’t take her eyes off Trini, and part of her wishes she’d look back, but Trini very resolutely does not.

“Well, hey,” Billy says eventually. “It’s cool. You’re with us now.”

Trini laughs. It’s not a pleasant laugh. “Exactly,” she says, and she’s finally pulling her gaze down from the stars, finally looking them in the eye. “See—there’s this thing about being a demigod. You can fight monsters and fulfill quests, but it’s all been done before, by the same heroes with different names, from different times. The same old story already written. And no one can look at us and see past the blood that runs in our veins. Who it belongs to.” Her voice is bitter, now. It strikes Kimberly that maybe it had been the whole time—she just hadn’t known what it sounded like. What it meant.

“We’re nothing but the name of a legacy,” Trini says, “and we’ll never be free of it. Free to be ourselves. So what does it matter, that we’re who we are? That we’re together?”

And make no mistake—she’s looking straight at Kimberly, now. Eye to eye. Kimberly feels the spike of adrenaline for what it is: the answer to not just a question, but a challenge. Skin prickling on the back of her neck, as though in response to a phantom touch.

“Okay,” Trini says slowly. “I’ve never said all that before. Didn’t think I ever would.” She turns to look at Jason. “Your turn.”

Jason holds up his hands. Hair swept gold, sitting cross-legged in his knee brace, peering at them like a deer through the trees. Harmless as anything. “Look,” he says, “you guys already know everything about me. Everything that I know, anyway.”

And then their gazes fall on _Kimberly,_ and she can’t breathe, because she should have seen it coming. Should have been prepared. But the words taste wrong on her tongue, after all Zack had said, after _Trini,_ and she can’t quite get it out past the panic in her throat—

“Skip me,” Kimberly says, voice cracking under the weight of all that she hasn’t said, and Trini’s eyes go shuttered, that fast.

“You can’t be serious,” Trini says.

“It’s not like we don’t all know,” Zack begins, but then he falls silent, as his eyes land on Jason. “Oh, shit.”

“Know what?” Jason says. Frowning at Kimberly for the first time, and she feels the battle instinct rise up in her chest, but there’s nothing to fight, nowhere to flee, so she forces it back down.

“Nothing,” Kimberly says, clenching her fists. “It’s not important.”

“It’s not _important?_ ” Trini says, voice rising. “You ruined that girl’s _life_ —are you even sorry, do you even _care_ beyond what it makes you into—”

“Hey,” says Billy, surprisingly. “If she doesn’t wanna talk about it, she doesn’t have to. It’s okay.”

And Trini backs down, but her eyes pierce straight through Kimberly like what she sees hurts her and she still won’t look away, won’t let her go. The knife point pinning a photograph to a wall through the spot where her heart should be. Kimberly swallows, searches for an explanation, an excuse. But all she can think of is to apologize, and that feels far too close to a surrender, a sign of defeat, and she bites her tongue instead.

“I’ll go,” says Billy, staring into the fire.

“Think you’ve already told us enough,” Jason says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You’ve told us, like, everything there is to know, about anything.”

Billy doesn’t smile. “Not everything,” he says, and something in his tone makes them all shut up. “See, my stepfather died in that car crash, seven years and nine months and eighteen days ago. You already know that. But you don’t know that it happened in just a moment. He looked away from the road for just a moment, and that’s all it took. It could have been prevented in so many ways—if he’d been wearing his seatbelt. If the car had been newer, stronger. If the ambulance’d gotten there sooner. If I’d been there. Because I was thinking, you know—I was standing there watching them clear away the wreck, clutching my mother’s hand, thinking if I’d been better—if I’d done something—I could have fixed it before it ever happened.”

“You were, like, ten,” Jason says. “Come on.”

Billy doesn’t look at him. “I was a son of Hephaestus,” he says. “Still am supposed to be. So I resolved to never let something like that happen ever again. Not on my watch. I went to work. I rebuilt the car, I upgraded the camp’s defense measures, I went and made the Physician’s Cure myself—”

“You what?” Zack says sharply.

Billy shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? The car’s just a wreck again, Rita’s coming to destroy the camp and nothing’ll be able to stop her, and all of us are gonna die.”

“Hold up,” Zack says. “That was your quest? The Physician’s Cure?”

“I thought you said that was just a myth,” Jason says, looking back and forth between them, confused.

“What isn’t?” Trini says, voice low.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Zack says, and his eyes are hard. “I can’t believe this.”

“Look,” Billy says, getting to his feet with his palms held up in defense, “it’s not that big of a deal, really, I know Zeus struck Asclepius down for making it in the first place but I mean, I did it and I’m still here, aren’t I—”

Kimberly practically expects a lightning bolt to come down at them from above right then and there, but it hasn’t rained in weeks now, and the sky remains silent. Unmoved.

“Death is _death,_ ” Zack shouts, and the rest of them jerk back in surprise, because it’s the first time they’ve actually seen him angry. Pacing back and forth in front of the fire. “And guess what? Nobody gets to come back from it. Not your dad, not my mom, not anyone. And I, I have had to live with that looming over me all my life, while you’re out here trying to find ways to cheat it, trying to be _smart_ just because you can’t get over something that happened _years_ ago—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t do anything to save her, too,” Billy says, and Zack rears back, punches him in the face.

“Hey!” Jason shouts, and they’re all on their feet now, Trini dragging Zack away, Kimberly’s hands coming up to cup Billy’s face, prod gingerly at the angry bruise blackening under his eye, even as he bats her away. “What the hell—”

“Please don’t _touch_ me,” Billy tells Kimberly, and she flinches like he’s hit him, but he’s already turning back to the others, to Zack. “You crashed the car because you didn’t think it matters, but I _know_ it does, and I’m doing something about it, I’m doing something about it the next time someone gets hurt because I _can,_ because I can’t prevent it but I can fix it, and I’m not gonna apologize—”

“You don’t get to choose!” Zack jabs a finger at him. “You don’t get to play god and decide who gets to live because your sorry ass doesn’t want to deal with death! You gotta wake the fuck up like the rest of us, and you gotta _live_ with it—”

“This is what we’re supposed to do,” Billy says, too earnest to look at, every word bleeding out of him. “It’s all I ever wanted to do. Save people.”

“Yeah?” Zack says. “Well, here’s something I guess you never learned, _genius_ —some people just can’t be saved.” He shoves Trini off him, backs away. “I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t—”

“Zack,” Jason tries, but Zack’s stalking away, into the shadows of the forest.

“I’m going after him,” Trini says, but when Kimberly makes to follow she shoves a finger up in her face, stops her short. “Don’t,” she says. Eyes cold. “Don’t you dare.”

“Trini,” Kimberly says, but she’s already gone.

“I don’t get it,” Billy says. He looks confused, but more than that—he looks hurt. “I don’t get what he’s so angry about, I don’t get why he doesn’t see—” He shakes his head. “I gotta go,” he says. “I gotta clear my head.”

“Wait,” Kimberly says, but Billy’s heading off in the other direction, to the faint lights of the city through the trees. “We can’t get separated—Billy, _wait,_ ” and she’s running after him, through the whisper of grass against her ankles, rustling in the wind.

Leaving Jason standing there, alone, in the light of a dying fire, as above, the first storm cloud of the summer darkens the midnight sky.

 

* * *

 

She’s lost him. Trini’s fumbling her way through the dark, tripping over undergrowth because she’s lost him—but maybe they’d never had him in the first place. A son of Hermes, wings on his shoes; they should’ve known better than to think they could make him stay. Just minutes ago Billy was throwing around the word _us_ like it meant anything at all, and now they’ve been revealed for what they never were. She’d laugh, if it doesn’t hurt her chest, just a little. That she’d been right all along. Children of Apollo, she thinks, bitter to the end. They’re always right.

“Zack?” Trini calls out. Silence. Typical, she thinks.

“C’mon, Zack,” she says. “We can deal with this when we get back to camp. Or not deal. Whatever. It won’t matter.” She can already see it in her mind—life rolling on as usual after they return, Zack disappearing and Billy building and Jason moving into whatever cabin he belongs to and Kimberly—

She bites down on the inside of her cheek, hard. Tastes blood.

Kimberly going back to how she was before, because she’d never changed at all, even if for a moment there Trini had almost believed they’d come to an understanding. Had given up her truth, and expected Kimberly to meet her there. It’s stupid, really—none of it had ever meant anything at all—but Trini still feels the betrayal like a physical blow. Not that Kimberly had dragged her out into the light, but that she had left her there, alone, and looked away.

“Zack,” she shouts, and it doesn’t even echo. Everything is too still, and she can’t see past her own face in the darkness, blindly making her way through the trees. It should be hot enough to go without a jacket, even at this time of night, but Trini’s skin prickles, cold. Something feels off. Feels like she’s being watched.

“Zack?” Trini says, and then something barrels out of nowhere to knock her backwards, slamming her into the unyielding trunk of a tree before she can draw in enough breath to scream.

“Shh,” Rita fucking Repulsa murmurs into her ear, and all the blood in Trini’s body runs terrifyingly cold.

“Oh, shit,” is all Trini can get out before an arm is pressing into her throat, cutting off her words. Flash of gold in the darkness, a hiss of putrid breath. Trini scrabbles for purchase at the bark of the tree, splinters digging into her palms, but Rita has her pinned by the neck, and she isn’t going anywhere.

“Shh,” Rita repeats, and then, “Surely you know who I am. Don’t you?”

Just enough pressure lets off her windpipe for Trini to heave a gasp. The air tastes vile, like rotted grave dirt, and she chokes on it. “Yes,” she rasps. “Yes, I do.”

“Good,” Rita croons, and Trini’s coin is in the pocket of her jeans. If she could just reach it— “Then you know that it’s useless to fight.” Crushes back down on her throat, until Trini’s hands come back up to claw at Rita’s arm, vision going blurry.

“Hmm.” A palm comes up to cup Trini’s chin, nails digging into her skin, forcing her to look into Rita’s eyes. In the confusion of the night and the haze of her lightheadedness Trini can make out an appraising stare, a glint of gold teeth. “Child of Apollo. How delightful. I’ve killed children of Apollo before.” She leans in even closer, rancid breath fanning across Trini’s face. “I killed _all_ of them _._ But that’s the tricky thing about gods, isn’t it—they never know when to quit. Just keep on with their filthy breeding.”

The bark of the tree trunk scratches into Trini’s back, the skin of her arms, but Rita keeps her relentlessly trapped with her weight, drags her ever so higher until Trini’s boots are kicking out desperately at the ground, to no avail.

“But you know, I suppose I’ll just have to keep on teaching them a lesson,” Rita says. “Whatever it takes for my dear father to finally recognize me. To allow me to inherit his throne.” Barely more than a whisper, but this close Trini can feel every word like a shiver upon her skin. A promise. Still, she sounds— _bored,_ almost, unaffected as she traces her cold fingers over Trini’s face, and Trini grits her teeth. Reels in all her strength, and bites down on Rita’s hand, hard as she can bear.

Rita wrenches her fingers out of Trini’s mouth. “You’ve hurt me,” she howls, staggering back—only to slam Trini back against the tree so hard she can feel her teeth rattle in her jaw. “Oops. Just kidding.” She curls a finger into Trini’s hair, tugs in mild interest as Trini struggles for air.

“You’ve got guts, little girl,” Rita says. “I’ll give you that. Hell—you almost even remind me of me. Why don’t we cut a deal? I’ll let you go, for now. Give you time to run and hide—I _do_ love a good chase. Run home and tell your dear family you love them. All you have to do is tell me one thing. Just one little thing.”

“What?” Trini bites out. The world is tilting all around her, and she wills herself to stay conscious. Digs her nails into her palms, and the pinpricks of pain cut through the haze, ground her in the present. “What is it you want?”

Rita smiles. “Where is he,” she says, running a fingernail down Trini’s cheek, and the gesture is almost tender.

Trini squints at her. “Who, Zordon?” Where else would Zordon be, if not at camp?

Rita’s eyes flash, grip tightening around Trini’s throat. Oh, shit. Probably shouldn’t have brought him up.

“No, not him,” Rita hisses, “though his time will come. What I want, dear girl, is something stronger _._ A _worthy_ enemy.”

Trini freezes at that one word. How could she have forgotten? Some half-blood, some _hero_ —in the midst of everything else she’d forgotten about their quest. About the prophecy.

“Where is the boy,” Rita breathes into Trini’s ear, as though exchanging a secret, and Trini closes her eyes. In the chaos of the moment a thought slides cleanly into Trini's mind— _you did this._ You spoke your truth, you ruined everything, you ended the world. And you can't ever take it back.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, and it’s the truth, because she’s failed this quest. She’s failed them all. Gotten caught up in her own baggage, her own bullshit, and now she’ll have to pay the price.

“Hmm,” Rita says, eyes narrowing. “I believe you. How disappointing. Must I _always_ do everything myself around here?”

And then she’s raising her other arm, and this is it, Trini thinks wildly, this is the end—

Air rushes back into her lungs and Trini sucks it in desperately as she slumps back down to the ground. Stares up at Rita, who regards her like she’s nothing more than an insect in the dirt.

“I’ll still give you your time, pathetic as you are,” Rita says. “I always keep my promises, after all. When you see Zordon next—” Rita grins, skeletal. “Do tell him that, will you?”

And then she’s gone, like she was never there at all, save for the ring of bruises around Trini’s neck and the acrid traces of burnt ozone lingering on the wind. Trini doesn’t know how long she sits there for, gasping for breath, pulse coming back down from its dizzying rush, palms sinking into the earth. Trying not to think about how close death had had her in its grip.

“Trini?” comes a voice. “Holy shit, what happened?” There’s a scramble through the grass, and Zack’s there, falling to his knees and hands coming up to reach for her—but he quickly drops them again, as though remembering himself. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Trini says. Heaves a shuddering breath. She still has the taste of Rita’s clammy skin in her mouth. “Yeah, I’m okay, I think. It was—it was Rita, she’s here, she found us. God—she almost _killed_ me.”

“Holy shit,” Zack says. “I mean—okay, okay, you’re okay. Here”—he’s fumbling for something in his pack, pulls out a bar of ambrosia—“eat some of this. You’re okay.”

Trini closes her hand around the bar, but doesn't take it. Holds it there until he's forced to look her in the eye. "Zack," she says, the name in her mouth like a miracle. "You're back. You came back."

Zack's gaze flickers, uncertain. "I," he says, and wavers there. It's okay, though—he doesn't have to finish. Trini knows everything he could possibly have to say. With every bite of ambrosia her head gets clearer, understands what needs to be done. What does it matter, she'd said back at the campfire, and she'd meant it, believed every word. But she _said_ it, and there's no wrath from the gods, no divine punishment. The world's still standing, and she isn't alone. She closes her hand around Zack's wrist, even as he startles, then holds himself perfectly still in response. Regardless of who they are and who they're trying to be, the truth is that this is bigger than them now, means something more. Calls for who they  _need_ to be. And maybe it's in her blood, a part of her that she'll never be free of, but then it must be in her heart, too. She has to believe that. 

"Zack," Trini says, tightening her grip on his arm. Her breath's coming back to her now. She has to tell him—has to make him understand—but then again, if he's here, he already does. "This is the only thing that matters," she says, and it hurts, but the relief of it sharpens her resolve, now that she knows what to fight for, where to strike. Is this what it feels like for Kimberly every time, she thinks. Not trapped, not bound, but set terrifyingly free. A force of her own. "We have to find Jason, and the others. We have to warn them."

Zack searches her eyes for a moment. Whatever he finds there must answer his questions, because he just nods, holds out a hand. "C'mon, crazy girl," he says, "let's go." Helps her up, and they're off, towards the faintest of lights from the city in the distance.

 

* * *

 

Kimberly catches up to Billy in the streets of the city, but he doesn’t stop, just keeps walking even as she tries to talk to him. “Come on,” she says, “Billy, talk to me, _please,_ ” and he turns to her then, hunched under the hood of his jacket, hands jammed into his pockets. The bruise of his eye is in full bloom, by now, and Kimberly winces at the sight of it.

“I did,” Billy says, as they turn a corner, and then another. “That’s what I did. That’s all I ever did—I told you guys everything, because none of you would talk, would even _look_ at each other, and I hated it, I hate things not working out, I hate not knowing why, and I only ever just wanted to fix it.” He clenches his jaw. It’s not a good look on him, and Kimberly wishes she hadn’t taken the brightness of his smile for granted, back when he’d given it so easily. “But I just messed it up,” he mumbles, and takes care to step over every crack in the sidewalk.

“No, you didn’t,” Kimberly says, dodging around a streetlamp. “C’mon, Billy—we’re all our own people, we’re capable of making our own mistakes, you don’t have to carry those, too.” She huffs out a breath. “It’s our fault. None of us really communicated with each other, until now, and look how well that turned out.”

“Shouldn’t have come on this quest in the first place,” Billy says, and Kimberly stumbles at that.

“What?” she says. The thought of turning down a quest—it’s unheard of. She can’t imagine why anyone would ever do something like that.

He frowns at her. “Not like I was necessary, was I,” he says. “All I had to offer was my car, and even that’s broken, now.”

“No, Billy,” Kimberly says, and god, she’s always been so bad at this, but she steels herself, finds it within herself to try. Like the rest of them had, before the light of the campfire. Zack giving up everything, spilling his guts. Trini looking them in the eye, letting go of the truth. And Billy, more brilliant than all of them—the closest to a real hero she’s ever seen, in all her years playing pretend at camp. Kimberly had hoped this quest would change her, would bring her back strong and shining and good as new. How stupid. As if anyone but her had any power to change herself. She made herself into this, she knows—so she can also make herself into someone else. Someone better. The choice is hers: to continue believing in the spell, or to break it.

“Of course you were necessary for this quest,” Kimberly says. “The Oracle named you, remember? Called you _worthy._ And more than that—of course we need you. You’re our friend.”

Billy doesn’t stop, but falters slightly, even as he casts her a baleful eye. “Friends?” he says. “Is that what we are? See, that’s what I’d thought, but then Zack kinda slugged me in the face, so I guess I was wrong, huh?”

“Zack’s—” Kimberly struggles for a word—“hurting. He’s hurting, and so are you.” A pause. “He’s also an idiot.”

Billy squints at her. “Do friends call each other idiots?”

“Yeah,” Kimberly says fiercely. “Yeah, they do. So he’s an absolute idiot and what he did to you wasn’t right but—he's angry, and he's _sad,_ and he just didn’t understand.”

“And you do?”

“Look,” says Kimberly. “I get it. Why you did it. It’s kinda extreme, but honestly—what isn’t, in our lives? I mean, we’re the direct descendants of the _gods._ There’s nothing ordinary about us. And other people might not understand, but I do—I grew up with over half my life spent at camp, training for the day I’d do something impossible, only it turns out you’ve just beaten us all to the punch.” She cracks a smile. “So you made something that shouldn’t technically exist. Of course you did. You’re a Hephaestus kid. Who else could have?”

They’re coming up to a crosswalk, and even though the streets are empty at this hour, Billy comes to an abrupt stop at the flashing red light, so sudden Kimberly almost trips over her own feet. He doesn’t look at her, but stares resolutely at the light, waiting for it to change. Shuffles his feet back and forth against the sidewalk.

“D’you think it was wrong?” Billy says. Eyes boring straight ahead.

“Billy,” Kimberly says, as seriously as she can. “There are monsters in this world. Believe me, if there’s anyone I trust with a potion that can bring someone back from the dead, it’s you.”

He’s staring at her now, as though searching her eyes for some sort of trick. “Really?”

“Really,” Kimberly says, and then, “god, I just can’t believe you succeeded _._ And you did it _alone?_ You realize how crazy that is, right? I’m even kinda jealous.”

Billy’s still studying her—then he’s bursting back into that smile again, like he can’t help himself.  “It was pretty cool,” he says. “I could tell you about it, sometime.”

“Yeah,” Kimberly says. “I’d like that.” She takes a breath, remembers the weight of Trini’s accusing stare, over the campfire. The answer to a challenge. “I could tell you some things, too.”

Billy’s eyebrows go up. “Okay,” he says, nodding.

“Right,” Kimberly says. “The light’s green, Billy.”

“What—oh.” They cross the street, and then Billy frowns, staring at something over Kimberly’s shoulder. “Hey—is that _Jason?_ ”

It’s past midnight, but neon still blinks at them from the light of gas stations and 24-hour establishments. Kimberly squints past them, traces Billy’s gaze to a store across the street, empty save for a lone figure sitting at a booth. Familiar blond hair, red T-shirt. Flipping a coin in the air.

“No way,” Kimberly breathes, not without some relief. To tell the truth she’d almost forgotten about him. She beelines for the door, enters the building with Billy on her heels, and Jason looks up at them in visible surprise.

“How long have you been sitting there?” Billy says, and Jason shrugs. Flips his coin again, and balances it upright on its edge, on the table before him.

“I didn’t know if you guys were coming back,” Jason says. “Didn’t want to wait alone out there, so I decided to come find civilization.”

And they’ve got bigger things to worry about, they’ve got Trini and Zack to find, they’ve got this whole mess to figure out, but suddenly Kimberly looks at Jason, sitting here waiting for them to come back to find him, and she sits down in the booth across from him, forces herself to look him in the eye.

“Okay,” Kimberly says. “What I wouldn’t say at the campfire. What I didn’t want you to know. What you don’t know about me. Is that I punched a guy in the face because he told me I was the meanest person he ever met.”

“Ouch,” says Jason, raising his eyebrows.

“I didn’t do it because he said it,” Kimberly says. Swallows. “I did it because he was right.”

“Okay,” Jason says, frowning, “that cannot be true,” and more than anything Kimberly wishes she could believe him.

“It is,” Kimberly says, “because his girlfriend shared a private photo of herself with me, and I sent it to him with a text that said _Is this the girl you wanna bring home to your mom?_ and I didn’t even know how _wrong_ it was, how _mean_ it was until I saw her face, and you know what?” She swallows. “She was my best friend. And she trusted me. And I did this, and I wanted to _die_ —”

“Then live with it,” Jason says, suddenly, cutting Kimberly off short. He looks at her, eyes so clear Kimberly can almost see herself in them, see who she could become. “What you did is what you did. What matters is what you do now.”

Kimberly slumps down. All the fight gone out of her, and all that’s left is the truth. “I’m _sorry,_ ” she says. “Believe me—I am so sorry, I swear.”

“Kimberly,” says Jason. Gentle. “It’s not me you need to be saying this to.”

“I,” Kimberly says, throat dry, blinking back the sudden pricking of tears in her eyes. “I just don’t know how to fix it.”

“You go back to what you broke,” Billy offers, from the other side of the booth, beside Jason. “Start from there.”

Kimberly thinks back to Amanda’s look of disbelief. Not just that, though—the betrayal on her face. And then, unbidden, another face leaps to her mind: Trini, staring at her in the light of the fire, the look in her eyes. The hurt that she put that there. And maybe it’s always gonna be there, maybe she can’t ever take any of it back, take it away. But she thinks—maybe—the least she can do is try. 

“When we get back to camp,” Billy says, “there’ll be time enough to make it right,” and Kimberly smiles wetly at them from across the table, rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Yeah,” she says, “you’re right,” because they’ve said it so matter-of-factly that she can almost believe it’s all that simple. “We’ve just got to find the others, too, and we’ll make it to camp tomorrow, all of us together—”

The bell of the door jingles again, and Kimberly turns to see Trini and Zack stumbling inside. “Wow,” she says, “that was easier than I thought it’d be,” but something’s wrong—there’s blood on Trini’s lip, panic in Zack’s eyes. A gathering of storm clouds in the sky outside, when the summer’s been dry as a bone, all this time.

“She’s coming,” Trini gasps, just as the ground beneath them starts to rumble, tables and chairs and windows all beginning to shake. Kimberly reaches out blindly for support, one hand landing on Billy’s arm, the other on Trini’s. Together the five of them can do nothing but watch as the roof of the Krispy Kreme tears apart with a groan, in a whirlwind of dust that stings at their skin and eyes. As the hands of skeletons burst through the earth, clawing at their feet.

“Found you,” says Rita Repulsa, eyes shining gold, and Jason’s coin wobbles from where it’s balanced on the table, tips over and lands on the face of the sword.

 

* * *

 

Billy’s read the stories. Heard them from the mouth of Zordon himself. None of it is enough to prepare him for the real deal, as he just narrowly avoids the wrath of Rita’s sceptre and dives under a table, dragging Jason down under with him. Both their weapons are out, and they’re paralyzed for a moment, gasping for breath under the cover of the table and staring at each other, wide-eyed.

“Your leg,” Billy says, spotting the brace. “Is it okay?”

“Kinda the least of our problems right now, dude,” Jason says. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Billy thinks he’s gonna pass out. “There is no plan—oh my god, what were we doing all this time without making a plan—”

“Right,” Jason says. “ _Stay alive_ sounds like a good plan to me. Watch out—” He presses them both against the floor as the table gets wrenched out of the ground and thrown into the distance, and Rita’s there, bringing down her sceptre. Billy acts on instinct—pushes Jason out of the way and throws up his lance. The force of collision is enough to send him slamming backwards through rows and rows of overturned tables and chairs, and he winces, the impact rattling his bones, jolting up through his ribs.

“Billy,” he can hear Kimberly shouting, but he grits his teeth, gets to his feet. Around him the building’s a wreck, glass shattered everywhere and plaster crumbling and cracks running through the ground, skeletons heaving themselves up and out into the world. Somewhere a car alarm’s going off. There are civilians all around, the Krispy Kreme workers, random strangers who’d had the misfortune of being outside at this time of night, running for cover through the streets, and Billy has to wonder for a moment what they see. If the Mist’s conjured up a hurricane or an earthquake or even a rabid bear. He remembers telling his stepfather about the monsters, back when he was a kid, and how his stepfather’d sat him down and said _you’re special, you can see them when we can’t, and that means you can defeat them._ Like it hadn’t been something to be ashamed or even scared of, but something wonderful. To see past the mystery and the magic, and look upon the true face of the world. And then, to protect others from it.

He clenches his fingers tight around his lance, metal humming in reassuring familiarity under his grip. “I’m good,” he says. Looks around to find the others. Kimberly and Trini are fighting back to back, knocking down skeletons left and right while Zack picks them off from the air, flinging them far out of the way.

“You ready?” Jason says, next to him. Billy takes a moment to look at him. It’s the guy’s first ever fight—fleeing from a mob of skeletons in a runaway van doesn't count—and he’s up against a descendant of the god of death with four teenagers who’d been going for each other’s throats just an hour ago. His hair’s mussed and there’s a cut on his forehead, dust and plaster on his skin, leg stuck in a brace. And still his eyes are blue and bright, looking back at Billy, holding his sword like he was meant for it. Steady as the eye of a storm.

“Let’s do this,” Billy says. “Just remember—you can’t let her get to you. Not you.”

“What?” Jason blinks at him. “You mean, not _any_ of us!”

“Oh, very good,” says Rita, and both of them flinch back, just in time as her sceptre cleaves through the spot they’d just been standing in. “There’s just one tiny problem with that, of course—how, exactly, are you going to stop me?”

Billy ducks and rolls under the blade of a nearby skeleton, lashes out with his lance and smashes the skeleton apart into a pile of bones. “Okay,” he says aloud to himself, because it’s what helps him focus. “Okay, probably gonna die here. What’s gonna happen? Mom’ll be alone, but it’s okay, ’cause she can find someone else—” He smashes one skeleton, and then another. “Except she can’t, ’cause you love her, and she’s already lost Dad, and god, I really don’t want her to be alone—”

A pink-tipped arrow knocks down a skeleton two inches from Billy’s face. “You okay?” Kimberly says, scanning his face for any sign of injury, and Billy snaps out of it.

“Yeah,” he says, and then, because Kimberly’s good at this kind of thing—“You got any idea how to deal with this?”

Kimberly twists her mouth into a wry grin. “Honestly?” she says. “I’ve no idea.”

“Finally,” says Trini from behind them, fists raised, daggers flashing in the night. “That’s a truth I never thought you’d admit.”

“Well,” Kimberly says, letting three arrows fly at once. “Turns out I’m full of surprises. Even to myself.”

“Hey,” says Jason, cutting down a skeleton in their way. “How about—less talking, more fighting?”

“I like the sound of that,” Zack calls from the air, and then Billy watches in horror and, somewhere under that, vague admiration as he picks up the Krispy Kreme sign lying in the rubble and heaves it straight at Rita’s head.

“Eat that,” Zack shouts as Rita goes sprawling, and Jason chokes out an incredulous laugh.

“You’re _crazy,_ ” Jason says, as though only just believing it for the first time, and Zack salutes him from the air, and neither of them see Rita picking herself up from the ground, eyes narrowing in their direction—but Billy does. The moment of clarity feels like all the blood rushing from his head at once, like he’s been hanging upside down, and only now is he putting his feet back on the ground, flipping back to right-side up. Seeing the world for how it really is. You gotta _live_ with it, Zack had said, and he’d been right, but Billy had thought all along that was exactly what he’d been doing, all this time. Wasn’t he living with it? All those years under the shadow of death, toiling in his workshop, watching the world to understand how it worked, how he could keep out the hurt. How he could keep it from happening again. But all that time he’d been alone. He hadn’t come anywhere near to saving anybody else, not for real. And now every cell in his body is sparking to life, screaming at him— _isn’t this is what you were waiting for_ —and he lunges forward, jumps up off a table and slams into Zack, knocking him out of the way just in time for the burst of golden light from the point of Rita’s sceptre to pierce through his chest, land home in his heart.

 

* * *

 

Zack blinks the blood and dust from his eyes, stares up at ragged sky, the handful of stars that’ve come out to watch. Glittering coolly in the night. Waiting for him to get back up. But he can’t get up, because there’s something on top of him, weighing him down against the earth, and Zack doesn’t want to know what it is—doesn’t want to look at his face—

“Billy,” someone screams, and something in the distance explodes, beyond his plane of awareness, things crashing into each other and Zack reacts on instinct, rolls the both of them over and shields them with his back, burrowing his face into the ground. Waits out the commotion. But it doesn’t stop, the clang of metal against metal, things breaking around him, shrill laughter like sirens. He can hear someone sobbing, through the ringing in his ears.

The body beneath him lies utterly still.

Zack raises his head. Reaches out. Traces the shape of the bruise over Billy’s eye with his palm, and holds it, as though he could take it back.

“ _Zack,_ ” someone’s shouting, and Zack grabs Billy by the arms, drags him out of the way just as a chair hurtles over their heads, crashes into the spot they’d been lying in. Zack keeps moving, half-pulls, half-carries Billy through the wreckage, through the storm of shrapnel, shielding Billy from the worst of it, until he finally gets them to a spot out of the way of the fight, behind a booth that’s still mostly intact, and lays him out on the ground.

“Billy,” Kimberly says, falling to her knees next to them, hands fluttering, face streaked with tears. “Billy. Is he—?”

“He can’t be,” Zack says, and he hears his voice as though it comes from somewhere far, far away.

“What are you doing,” says Trini, and it’s then that Zack realizes Jason is there, too, kneeling on the ground. Madly fumbling through Billy’s pockets, hands patting down his chest. Like he's looking for something, Zack thinks distantly, and then understanding breaks in him like a bone.

“The Physician’s Cure,” Zack says, numb. His mouth is dry, and he has to swallow to get the words out.

And Jason didn't grow up under the shadow of the gods—doesn't know the danger he's playing with, the kind that incurs wrath of fire and brimstone—but he casts Zack a sidelong glance. Eyes blue and clear.  _If this was a sign from the gods, he'd have to be blind to miss it._

“He said he made it,” Jason says, voice level. “He’s got to have it on him. He said it could revive people, right? And if he said it, then I believe it.”

And he pulls out a vial from Billy’s jacket pocket, the clear liquid inside catching the awful golden light of Rita’s spectre, glowing in the distance.

“Is that it,” says Kimberly, “is it gonna work—”

“Are you sure,” Trini says, “are you sure about this,” and it’s Zack she’s looking at—

“It doesn’t matter,” Zack says. Because he thought it did, back when he was being all righteous under the light of the campfire, but Billy’s body is getting colder by the second and he was right, he’d _done_ something, he’d done something to fix what he could, while Zack had done nothing at all, looked at the steady loom of death approaching on the horizon and let it defeat him. And he’d thought he was used to it, thought he’d already lost everything, thought he couldn’t be hurt any more, but the regret is clawing open something new and empty and aching inside of him, something he wasn’t ready to lose.

But now it’s his turn to fight back, isn't it? To fix everything. To selfishly drag Billy back to a world that still needs him to be here.

_What you thought it was worth—_

“The gods can strike us dead,” Zack says, face etched in grief, “I don’t care, just give him back.”

“This is the only thing that matters,” Trini says, resounding like an echo of her own self, almost reverent, and Jason nods. Tips Billy’s head back, opens his mouth with two fingers on his jaw, and pours the contents of the vial down his throat.

Billy stays unmoving for so long Zack starts to come back to himself, the pain of his ribs and his back and the bruise on the back of his head filtering into his awareness, the sweat and the dirt, the blood and the cuts, the world gone to hell around him and the others fighting tooth and nail to keep it alive. But still Zack keeps his eyes fixed on Billy’s, palm against his chest, waiting for the flicker of life. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything other than empty, and it astonishes him now, the hope that leaks back in, cracks letting in the light. How much it hurts to hold, but also how his body can still bear it.

Come on, Billy, he thinks. Come back to us.

And Billy does, eyes flying open with a gasping, heaving, brilliant breath.

“Did I die?” Billy says.

“No,” breathes Kimberly, hands reaching out to run over Billy’s face, like she can barely believe it.

“Yes,” says Trini, knocking Kimberly's hands away, because Billy doesn’t like to be touched. Sits back on her heels, letting out a shaky laugh, and forgets to let go of Kimberly’s hands, clutching onto them herself.

“A little,” Zack tells Billy, and looks up to see Jason, eyes wide with wonder, breaking into a blinding grin.

“You did it, Billy,” Jason says. “You saved yourself.”

Billy stares up at him. “No,” he says, almost thoughtful, “I didn’t. You guys did,” and he takes Zack’s hand, pulls himself up.

“You’re _alive,_ ” Zack says, voice cracking on that impossible, beautiful word, and they all crowd around Billy for a moment, overcome by awe.

“Not for long,” comes a voice. Right. Rita Repulsa. For a moment Zack can’t believe it—that the fight still isn’t over. But he looks around. The world on fire. Trini and Kimberly, clutching hands. Jason with a laugh on his face. Billy, eyes hardening, moving for his lance—and he did that, _they_ did that, together. Brought him back to life. They nod at each other like they’ve learned some new secret, shared among the five of them—they can do anything. Even put Rita Repulsa’s legacy to its final bitter end.

Billy picks up his lance, gets to his feet. “I don’t think so,” he says. Blood on his teeth, bared.

“You’re not _worthy,_ ” Rita hisses, and she raises her hands, closes her eyes.

“What’s she doing?” Jason says.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” Kimberly says.

“Oh, no,” Billy says. “You guys. I think she’s summoning—”

And the ground beneath their feet tears itself open with a roar, a shapeless mass hauling itself out through the livid scar scorched into the earth as the five of them scramble out of the way. Its hulking form solidifies into arms and legs, a massive head and glittering eyes, and every inch of it is solid, blinding gold.

“Kill them,” Rita intones, and points a single sharp fingernail straight at them.

“Oh, shit,” is all Zack has time to say before the monster’s lunging towards them. There’s nowhere, no time to run. All he can think to do is bring his axe over his head, raise his blade against it, and he feels the others do the same in a flurry of movement—Kimberly letting loose arrow after arrow, Trini wildly slashing her daggers, Billy splitting his lance into the two trident blades within, and Jason lifting his sword with a yell. Then the monster of gold slams into them with enough force to rattle Zack’s bones in his body, ears ringing from the strain, and it drives them deeper _into_ the ground, like it’s trying to send them straight through the earth to the pits of Tartarus itself. Zack can feel something give, inside his chest. The burst of a broken rib. But he grits his teeth and blinks the sweat out of his eyes and stares straight into the monster’s dead golden gaze, and he does not tremble.

“Hold the line,” Jason shouts.

All of them stand together. Elbows knocking into each other, weapons raised, and in the clumsiness of the moment, the closeness of space between them, something strange happens. The edge of Zack’s axe slots into the curve of Kimberly’s bow, which touches the hilt of Trini’s dagger, which presses into the blade of Billy’s trident, which taps against Jason’s sword with an audible _click._ All of them shudder, with the sudden hum of connection. A circuit, complete.

_It’s interesting that all our weapons take the same form,_ Billy had said. _Don’t you think?_

And then they’re not holding individual weapons anymore, but something else, parts assembling into something larger, coming together in a spray of light as they watch in awe. A crossbow-like cannon comes alive in their hands, sleek and white and glittering sharp through the dust.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Trini says, but her grin says a different story.

“Does this do what I think it does,” Billy says.

“Only one way to find out,” says Jason, and they bring their arms up, point the mouth of the cannons straight into the snarling mouth of the beast.

“Ready?” Kimberly says.

“For this?” Zack says, a laugh sharp in his mouth. “I was _born_ ready.”

Five rays burst out of the cannons. Black, pink, red, yellow, blue. The searing heat of energy burns at Zack’s face, and the blast is so bright but Zack doesn’t close his eyes, stares straight into the explosion and whoops in sheer delight, lets in every last bit of the light.

When the smoke clears Rita Repulsa is standing alone in the centre of it all, wringing her hands. “No,” she says, looking very much like a child who’s had her toy taken away, “no, you can’t—you’re not _worthy_ —” She lunges towards them, and they scrabble to get the blaster up and aimed again, but something stops her before she can reach them. For a moment Zack thinks absurdly that she’s had her strings cut, like a puppet, eyes bulging and arms reaching and frozen in place. But no—there’s something wrong with the ground under her feet. It almost seems like it’s caving in under her.

“No,” Rita gasps, eyes wide with shock. The sight of fear is so wrong on her face that Zack almost drops the weight of the cannon. But the ground has turned on her, now, collapsing her into the earth, and he still doesn’t understand—until he sees the skeletal hands reaching up for her, dragging her under.

“ _No,_ ” Rita’s howling. “No, you can’t do this to me. Not you. I’m your best—I’m your legacy—I’m _all you have left_ —”

And then the earth has swallowed her up. There’s nothing left to show for Rita Repulsa, daughter of Hades, but a smoking crater in the ground and shards of gold strewn everywhere like stones.

They stare at the spot for a while in silence. Zack thinks that’s the closest he’s ever going to come to seeing the gods for himself: the remnants of their wrath. He thinks that maybe he’s glad for it.

“Huh,” says Jason, eventually. He sounds almost thoughtful. “So that’s who they meant.”

“What?” says Billy.

“Nothing.” Jason lowers the cannon, then, and right—they’re still holding it up. Zack lets go of it entirely, feels the weight leave him, and in its space everything else comes rushing in. The ache of his shoulders, his head. The flare of pain in his chest. He staggers to his knees and unclenches his fist to reveal the gleaming face of his coin, returned back to his bleeding palm.

“Zack,” someone’s saying. He thinks it might be Trini. “Zack, are you okay?”

He cracks open a smile. “Never better,” he says, and call him crazy—but he believes it.

It takes fucking forever to get back to the van. Zack has to stumble through the rubble and the streets and the trees leaning heavily on Jason and Kimberly, gritting his teeth through the pain. Just his luck to be the one hurt the worst in the fight—but then again, he’s still alive _._ Trini gets there first, digs out all their nectar and ambrosia, but Zack goes straight for his pack, rips open his last bag of M&M’s with his teeth.

Here by the side of the road, the world stretching on for miles around them, the sun just starting to rise, Zack can see the wreckage for himself. Broken rib, maybe a concussion. Enough cuts and bruises for all of them to last a lifetime. The afterimage of their blast, only just beginning to fade from his eyes, brighter than anything he’s ever seen. And the van, still totaled, and Billy looking down at it, eyes hard to read in the scarce light of morning. The damage they've done.

“You can fix it, right?” Jason says.

Billy considers it. “Nah,” he says. “Think I’m gonna let it go.”

No one says anything, but they stand there in a circle, close enough to touch. Zack passes around his bag of M&M’s, and finally takes a bite of ambrosia. Strength floods back into him like a rush of blood. There’s a long road ahead of them. He doesn’t know what they’re gonna have to do—find a car, a bus, some way of paying for it. Hitchhike. Walk until their legs give out. It’s gonna take forever. But somewhere the world’s gotta end. Zack can see it now. The sun rises slow and steady over the horizon, and someday they’re gonna get there. But for now they have all the time in the world, with each other.

“Come on,” Jason says. Slides Zack’s sunglasses down over his face—when the hell did he take those? “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Trini wakes up. It takes her a moment to remember where she is. They've hitched a ride on top of a train; Kimberly'd played with the Mist a little to let them get away with it. There's nothing around for miles but wild grass and fields and open sky. 

“Look,” Zack says. The wings on his shoes are fluttering lazily, but he stays right where he is, laid out next to Trini on the roof of the train car. He's pointing at a sign in the distance. Trini misses the blur of letters as it whips by, but Kimberly's smiling.

“Home,” she says.

Home, Trini thinks, and closes her eyes, wills for an image to come to mind. But nothing does—not the house with the white picket fence she lives in with her family, and not the house before that, or before that. Not even the gleaming gates of Camp Half-Blood and the gold cabin waiting for her there. Maybe she doesn’t have one, and never will.

Or maybe the word means something else. Not a place but a person: the one she’s fought to become, all this time. The solid ground on which she can live. On which she can build.

Billy’s chattering in excitement about camp, about everything they’re gonna show Jason, the cabins and the training facilities and the food, and have you ever seen a twenty-foot tall bonfire, ’cause oh man, it ain’t like anything you’ve ever imagined, and Trini shifts, opens her eyes. Sees Kimberly watching her.

She hadn’t had a dream, just now. If you can believe it.

Trini sits up and watches Kimberly back. Once, it would have felt like a challenge. But there's nothing to fight, not anymore. Just a question to answer. 

The wind is soft in her hair. Sun on her face, making her brave. Trini reaches out, takes Kimberly's hand in hers.

“Oh,” Kimberly says, a little stunned not by the gesture, but by the weight of her palm, real. She holds on. They're sitting very close, and Trini's gaze gets stuck on Kimberly's mouth. The line of it, quirking up in a smile. Catching her out. 

“ _Oh,_ ” Kimberly says again, and Trini punches her in the arm. 

Kimberly laughs. Her hair is flying everywhere in the wind, eyes shining. In the quiet moment between them Trini can sense it: a sureness that draws them ever closer, toward each other. She tilts her head up, meets the curl of Kimberly's mouth with her own. Everything about it is almost softer than Trini can bear, and if she trembles just a little, she must be more tired than she thought. 

In any case, it's just as she's always expected: Kimberly runs hot as a fire, burning up under her touch.  

Somebody wolf-whistles. When Trini and Kimberly break apart, everyone pretends not to have been looking, but they're all grinning. 

“Shut up,” Trini says, but Zack only waggles his eyebrows at her. She turns to Kimberly for support, but she's laughing, again. Oh, great—she's gonna be  _insufferable_ about this, isn't she?

“I'm gonna kick your ass,” Trini tells her. 

Kimberly grins. “When we get home,” she says. Eyes alight.

Yeah, Trini thinks. Right here in the middle of nowhere. A world still standing. Here's a place as good as any. 

“Home,” Trini agrees, and leans back in to stake her claim.

 

* * *

 

On the training grounds in the distance Kimberly is waving her arms wildly, shouting something that gets lost in the wind. Across from her Trini lets out a visible huff of annoyance, before barrelling straight into her and knocking them both into the ground. They roll around in the grass for a minute before Trini comes out on top, pinning Kimberly down with her knees and laughing.

“Damn,” Zack says. “Kimberly’s losing her touch.”

Jason runs his fingers through the grass. Smiles, and says nothing.

Across the way, Trini looks up and spots them watching. Lets off Kimberly, who cranes her neck and waves at them. Then Trini’s helping her up, and they’re running towards the three of them, seated on the grassy hill.

“Hey,” Kimberly says, face flushed, out of breath. “What’re you guys up to?”

Billy squints up at her. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s gonna rain, you know.”

“Is it?” Trini casts her doubtful gaze up at the sky. “There was supposed to be a storm ages ago. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Kimberly sits down cross-legged next to Jason, and Trini flops down next to her. Somehow her head ends up resting on Kimberly’s lap. Nobody questions it.

“You guys have been at it all day,” Zack says. “Ever heard of taking a break?”

Kimberly shrugs. “It’s kind of hard,” she says, “to come back down from. You know.”

They know. After the fever dream of their fight with Rita—and with each other—and after the long way back, life at Camp Half-Blood had settled into a strangely quiet summer. The calm before the storm—but they’ve already braved the worst of it, hadn’t they? No, this is different. Not the kind of restlessness that rises up in warning, but in anticipation. Because everything’s only just beginning, now.

Jason leans back against the sturdy trunk of an old oak tree, peers up at the sky. The storm clouds are beginning to gather. It’s about time, he thinks.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Trini says, suddenly.

“Nothing,” Kimberly says, from where she's carefully fixing a braid into Trini’s hair.

Trini doesn’t look like she’s buying it, but before she can pursue it further Billy turns to Jason with a frown on his face.

“You know what I still don’t get?” he says.

Jason raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“How easily you just rolled with us, man, from the beginning. Four kids spouting nonsense about the gods—we could have been crazy, for all you know.”

Jason snorts. “You _are_ crazy,” he says.

Zack lets out a bark of laughter. “Takes one to know one,” he says.

“You did accept it way too easily, though,” Trini says, blinking open an eye at him.

“Well, wasn’t it true?” Jason says.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t _earned,_ ” Trini insists. “We didn’t make you believe it.”

“Sure you did,” Jason says.

Because when they’d said it, the four of them around him, blood and dirt on their faces, light streaming down through the trees to crown him gold, Jason could see it. Jason could believe it. Easy as that.

“Also, the skeletons,” Jason adds. “It’s kind of hard to not believe in anything, after you see something like that.”

“So it wasn’t our dazzling skills of persuasion,” Zack says. He drops his sunglasses down over his face—he’s _still_ wearing them, though the sun isn’t even out anymore. “Or our rugged good looks.”

Jason snorts. “In your dreams.”

“We don’t have those, anyway,” Billy says, “we’re no Aphrodite kids.”

“Rude,” Zack says. “And hey, we didn’t need no Aphrodite kid, did we?”

“No,” Billy says. A smile on his face. “We didn’t. We did it all on our own.”

“With a cannon blaster,” Trini says.

“And Billy’s van,” Kimberly says.

“And my great ideas,” Zack says. “Ow—why are you throwing grass at me? You know I’m right!”

Jason laughs. Somewhere, a breeze picks up, ruffling his hair, and he idly flips his coin in his palm. It lands heads-side up. Huh. Funny. He’s never looked at this side of it before. The face is smudged by dirt, and he wipes it with his thumbnail, squints closer to see who it is, and from above finally comes the first crack of thunder.

 

_we can be heroes everywhere we go..._

— [UNSTOPPABLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xydf351l-gw), THE SCORE

 


End file.
